Piranha 3DD (2012)

It shouldn’t be that hard to make a Piranha movie – put in some stock characters, spice in a bit of bullshit pseudoscience and then put in huge doses of boobs and gore and you have a movie. The bar is low and nobody ever expected anything at all out of this series. So with THAT said…Piranha 3DD is a giant mess that I’m not sure who it was supposed to appeal to.

Director: John Gulager

Starring: Danielle Panabaker, Matt Bush

IMDb

Yup, from the super classy title on down, this movie is basically just confused. It’s confused about why it even exists. Frankly, so am I. So let’s play detective and try to get a hold on what the fuck went wrong with this botched attempt at a sequel.

The movie starts off with a news report explaining that the town from the last movie was abandoned because of all the piranha attacks. There doesn’t seem to be any context for showing this news report now or anything, so I guess it was just rerun day at the news station.

Also, what, the ENTIRE FUCKING TOWN was abandoned because some people died in a piranha attack one day? There was no government intervention to try and help out? No scientists sent out to investigate? Nothing?

What's the big deal? It's just a mass murder by way of killer fish. Get over it. Pffffffttttt.

Okay. I totally buy that.

We then get a couple of rednecks playing Open Kill Fodder out on a lake with a dead cow. I’m really just waiting for Jason to show up and kill these guys, but all I get is fart noises and piranha eggs coming out of the cow’s ass.

Worst Hatchet sequel ever!

Our main characters this time are a bunch of people at a theme park. Apparently that guy from Thank You for Smoking who wasn't Aaron Eckhart is now playing some jackass running a water park with an adult section full of nude women swimming around.

Ohh yeah, late night commercials will totally bring in the millions; you're such a fuckin' genius of marketing.

I really don’t get who would ever go to this place – the usual audience for a water park is kids, whose parents would DEFINITELY not take them to some place where there are a bunch of strippers swimming around naked. And the perverts who WOULD usually flock to see strippers WOULDN’T be paying the exorbitant prices for a water park – they’d just be going to a strip club down the street. I mean it’s really not worth the effort.

Also, yes, going down a water slide naked with fireworks in both hands that could easily kill you is an AWESOME way to die horribly and/or live a life of agonizing, crippled and humiliating pain. You truly are the smartest person in the world.

Should I go for a Darwin Awards joke, or is it already implied?

Anyway, enough of that boring stuff – it’s time for OTHER boring stuff, like characters having sex in the water. Apparently this girl named Shelby is a virgin, and has finally decided to give it up to this random guy she just met tonight. They strip and go in the water with her asking him “not to try any funny stuff” – then immediately gets up close to him for a kiss afterwards. Clearly we’re dealing with a real brain trust here. This is further proved when she mistakes a bunch of piranhas nipping at her lower legs for the guy's hard-on against her belly – I know she’s supposed to be a virgin, but unless you just had this magical idea in your head that a guy's dick can disperse into hundreds of tiny, sharp-teethed fish, this is pretty tough to believe.

After they get out of the water, she asks if the guy thinks her friend is prettier than her. The guy says no, he’s never been attracted to girls with big breasts – to which the girl says that’s sweet. I can’t – I just can’t. If I even try to think about this dialogue too much, I'm pretty sure I'll end up turning into an alcoholic in a few paragraphs.

Elsewhere we get more idiots having sex, this time in a van that I guess they forgot to put in “Park” – as it starts rolling down the hill and lands in the lake. Because the one guy had his hand handcuffed to a pole, he can’t get out when piranhas start attacking. The girl says she’s going to go for help. Even though the van is clearly not far from the shore at all and she could easily jump or even walk to safety, she just stands on top of the dumb van and screams for help when clearly nobody is around to help.

Keep shouting, you idiot, I'm sure you'll make it out okay. I mean it's not like you're in a horror mo---oh. Never mind.

I’d like to say nobody hears her because they’re just not around, but I really think the REAL answer is that they all DID hear her and just wanted her to die. I mean, that’s what I would have done.

The next day, main character Maddy is comforting Shelby, who is sad that her best friend, Stand On Top of Van Girl, is missing and probably dead. Shelby then says the girl has stolen 11 of her previous boyfriends – wait a fucking minute; 11 PREVIOUS BOYFRIENDS?! And she was one of your best friends? What, were the rest of your friends serial killers? Child pornographers? How is someone who has stolen 11 of your boyfriends over the years in the running for BEST FRIEND?!?

On second thought, anyone who has 11 boyfriends and still can’t get laid clearly doesn’t deserve sympathy. So I’m good with that. And anyway they DO almost get killed immediately afterward, which is cool:

They fall right into the water where the piranhas are, and somehow don't just die immediately. I guess it's 'cuz they're the MAIN CHARACTERS!

Even despite all of what’s happened already – the piranha attack they saw firsthand and the fact that their friends’ van was found empty in the same lake where piranhas just attacked them – they never alert the authorities and never even really piece together the connection between any of this. You goddamned morons.

But hey, I’ve heard of worse excuses for a Christopher Lloyd cameo:

Flux Capacitor, Marty, yadda yadda yadda.

Gee. Either that’s actually Doc Brown from the future taking the present one’s place, or you just called Christopher Lloyd at the last second and he said ‘fuck it’ and rolled out of bed and came straight to the set. Either way. The scene is pretty much just a bunch of pseudoscience. I mean, THIS is what passes for ‘studying fish’ for him:

Yup, just putting his face up to the glass and imitating piranha teeth snapping. Amazing. The rest of this scene is just filler trying to explain how the fish are going to kill everyone later. I’d go into detail, but really, who cares? Who is this scene supposed to appeal to? Your built-in audience isn’t exactly the type that’s going to really give a crap what you make up to explain your “plot” – they’re pretty much just here for the boobs.

We also get a David Hasselhoff cameo – he’s in this hotel room with a couple women playing some dumb song on his miniature keyboard. I mean really, guys? What, you couldn't throw in a Kurt Russell or Steven Seagal cameo too? Maybe "Who Let the Dogs Out?" to complete the timeless references?

Meanwhile, we get the end of the ‘Shelby is a virgin’ subplot – she’s been feeling sick all day and is afraid she’s going to die, so she begs that idiot to fuck her. Yeah, you could at least GO TO A DOCTOR if you’re afraid you’re going to die, but I guess that would make too much sense, and would deprive us of the absolutely essential scene where a piranha comes out of her vagina and bites the guy’s dick off.

Pfft, not nearly as good as Teeth. Call me again when you have symbolic and metaphoric implications of the feminine coming of age and THEN we'll talk!

Yeah, you just saw that. I’m just amazed it took this movie of all things to show the way piranhas really work. They’re like werewolves! If they attack you, they then proceed to burst out of you like that thing from Alien. That is how werewolves work, though, right? Right?

The only other slightly funny thing that happens is when Marcellus Wallace from Pulp Fiction shows up with no legs – apparently his legs were eaten in the first movie and now he’s chosen this water park opening to try and beat his new fear of water.

That's pride fuckin' with ya. Fuck pride.

He tries to get his sidekick guy, who looks something like a drowned Steve Buscemi, to push him in the water, but keeps changing his mind at the last second. He even says not to listen to him when he protests and just to throw him in anyway. This results in a scene where a lifeguard sees the guy about to push him in and stops them – it’s small change in terms of humor, but eh, you could always do worse I guess – you could always write the crap the rest of this is filled with.

Like this other scene ripping off Nightmare on Elm Street, because yeah, when I watch a Piranha sequel, I really fucking expect to see a parody of Nightmare on Elm Street in it:

We get a couple of scenes of Maddy trying to warn everyone about the piranhas, but her jackass stepfather won’t listen and even has his cop buddy physically pick her up and carry her away to prevent her from telling anyone. It’s pretty much a waste of screen time though, as within the next few minutes after this piranhas are everywhere, and causing a bloodbath if I ever saw one.

Pulling her out of the water to safety would be easy, but I guess that would make this guy a likable character...gee, he'd really be good buddies with Arkin from The Collector, I guess.

If the gore was better, I’d say this was a pretty fun climax – but it’s mediocre, and there are a bunch of flat out what the fuck moments on display. Like, really, do I need to see a 3D close-up shot of this guy’s ass with a piranha attached to it? I mean, that DID have the effect of making me unable to sleep peacefully ever again. If that was your intention, good fuckin' job on that!

I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry for your oncoming flood of night terrors for the rest of eternity after seeing this.

And what’s up with that scene where the stepfather sees a little girl crying over her dead mother and then gives her a bunch of money to try and make up for the dead mother? I mean wow - pretty dark for a horror comedy about fucking piranhas. I mean Jesus.

Then he accidentally runs her over and kills her with his golf cart, turning the whole scene from depressing and unpleasant to absolutely miserable. Thanks a lot for that gem of comedy gold too, movie! Fortunately, the movie then shows us you can get decapitated by a party streamer line if you drive into it. You don't even have to go that fast or anything. Just colliding with a party streamer line will decapitate you. Funny world, huh?

Only in death, however, does this wretched character finally score with the ladies:

I'd say this is incredibly fucking tasteless, but ... no, it's just incredibly fucking tasteless. That's the end of it.

So I guess they kill the piranhas by draining the water from the park and sucking most of them back down the drain. That one fat guy from the instant-mental-scar ass shot from before goes down and blows up the water supply, causing a big torrential downpour upstairs that ends up impaling the cop guy from before with a trident. I dunno, I'm far past the point of caring by now, but what REALLY makes the scene good is the pseudo-epic orchestrations put in as a joke!

Eh, still better than the ending of The Collection. I mean this was supposed to be stupid; when The Collection did it, they were trying to be serious.

Then they get a call from Doc Brown again, telling them the piranhas are evolving and growing legs – well, that’s completely fucking stupid. If you make a sequel of that, I will stick a harpoon in your gut. Some dumb kid goes up to the last piranha flopping around in the shallow water and tries to take a picture of it. His mother warns him against it, but he tells her she’s stupid and piranha can’t move as fast on land – she SHOULD just physically just DRAG him away, but I guess having a kid so stupid was unappealing to her, as she just watches as the piranha devours her child's head:

Hasselhoff ends the movie by calling the kid dumb, which sounds insensitive, but honestly I pretty much agree. I mean, what was that kid’s future, anyway? Certainly nothing good if he’s the type of little moron who approaches the fish that was just murdering everyone to try and take a picture.

I mean, clearly the real injustice here was that the kid shouldn’t have been allowed to have a cell phone at that age! Insert your own social commentary about Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, complete with self-indulgent prattle about how Millennials suck. Now you're ready to write for the Huffington Post.

So that’s your movie! Child death, fish coming out of vaginas and David Hasselhoff. I think that really says it all. What else do you want? A dissertation on the shit-ass godawful dialogue, characters, plot and overall story this movie spewed out as if from a leaky sewer-pipe? Pfft. I think we all know why this movie was really made...

Hmmm...nope, it's still not quite coming to me...

On second thought, I'm stumped.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Classic Review: Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

Director: Robert Zemeckis, otherwise known as the God of 80s Movies

Starring: Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, Kathleen Turner, Charles Fleischer

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438/

"I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way."

-Jessica Rabbit

Blending cartoons with live people in movies is a weird idea. But back when it started out…it was still a weird idea. But strong writing and a lot of charisma catapulted this oddball of a movie, titled Who Framed Roger Rabbit, to become quite a memorable and interesting flick that people still talk about today. Let’s take a look.

First off, there’s one thing that really bothered me about this movie, and it’s the DVD menu. Basically it’s set up in a very gimmicky, fun way to go along with the story of the movie. It looks like you’re sitting in the movie’s talking car, Benny, who provides witty commentary. That’s OK I guess, but then all the menu options are named after things from the movie. At first I was like, OK, this will all make sense once I’ve actually seen the thing…well, nope, it’s like they just randomly named everything for no reason other than to have it themed after the movie. It’s not terrible, and at least they were trying to make it fun, but I kind of wish they had just skipped all of this stuff and just given us a straightforward menu. I mean, I had trouble even finding the subtitles menu and the select scene one.

OK, all complaining aside, the movie is pretty great. The plot is basically this: Cartoons and reality are intermixed and each has their own politics and cities to live in. A cartoon star, Roger Rabbit, is framed for the murder of a high profile politician, which leads a grumpy detective and a voluptuous female cartoon companion to go and set things right, getting into a ton of mayhem and madness all the way. It’s a mix between Looney Tunes and film noir. Did you ever think you’d see that before the first time you popped this into your VCR back in the 90s? Probably not.

Really the reason this film is good is just because it’s creative and keeps your attention, nothing more. It’s a good, fun story, with a lot of energy to everything about it. You can tell they were having a ton of fun making this movie, as it shows in every scene. The thing about this is that it is funny – very much so, at times – but the humor seems to be naturally ingrained into the world of the movie itself, instead of forced on us through verbal jokes and slapstick, although there are some of those as well. This is a world that is funny in and of itself. That’s kind of interesting about this.

The acting is generally decent to good, with the main characters being the best ones. Bob Hoskins as Eddie Valiant, the grumpy detective I mentioned above, is a good one, and Christopher Lloyd as the evil Judge Doom is good, although he raises a few questions. How does one become a judge of doom? Do they really just elect judges this crazy in this world? I guess it fits the themes of corruption and 80s seediness though. I sure wouldn’t want him judging my case. Charles Fleischer deserves special mention, too, as he voiced several characters in this movie, including the titular Roger Rabbit, and also Benny, as well as a few others. He’s really talented and has a knack for making very different sounding, very goofy voices, and he brings us some of the film’s funniest parts.

Everyone always talks about Jessica Rabbit, the sexiest cartoon alive, and for good reason. She was specifically constructed to be that way, like a middle finger toward everyone’s perceptions of what is attractive. The way she flaunts her unnaturally curvy body and talks in that low, sultry voice…damn. It’s pretty hard not to anticipate every scene she’s in. She’s just a cartoon! But let loose your dignity for a second and try to tell me with a straight face that she isn’t at least a little bit sexy anyway. Kathleen Turner does an admirable job as her, too.

The film just sort of hooks you in. It keeps the punches rolling and remains very watchable all the way through – the most basic kind of enjoyment. There isn’t a boring moment. The plot has a ton of mysteries and goofy, imaginative cartoon stuff to make sure you’re kept on your toes at all times. There’s a lot of completely zany things going on at all times and I really like how creative they got with some of the animation and ideas. It’s a feast for the eyes as well as a well told story, with the blend between wacky cartoons and film noir being so odd and out of left field that it just becomes awesome. If you like creative movies, you’ll like this, but you’ve probably already seen it anyway. These were just my own ramblings. Take them as you will.

Review: Baby Geniuses (1999)

Director: Bob Clark

Starring: Nobody who will look back on this with any fondness

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118665/

Back at the drawing board, the devil-horned film executives stroke their oddly pointed beards…”What can we come up with next to drain the American – and thus rest of the world – populous of their hard earned cash and continue destroying the integrity of the film industry? How about we create a movie about…babies, babies that can talk to one another, and know all the secrets of the universe? Nah, that would be stooping too low even for us. Toss it in the garbage. We’ll just make a Halloween movie with Busta Rhymes instead.”

Little did they know, however, that a mutated slime monster from below the Earth named Bob Clark would find the aborted script and fuse it into his own body, thus creating the horrendous viral mockery of cinema that can only be dubbed Baby Geniuses.

The movie starts off with some secret agents wearing black suits running around in a maze chasing, apparently, an escaped prisoner of some kind. There are even helicopters in the sky, denoting how important this scenario is. Then we see a small child with curly brown hair wandering out through the maze as well. Hey, director Bob Clark! Someone let their kid onto the set again! Come get him before they trample him!

No, if you can believe it, this is the movie’s gimmick. This whole team of guys is out looking for this one little kid, because – get this; hold onto your seats – he’s been genetically enhanced somehow to be super smart and apparently super strong as well. Yes, this must be the worst and most humiliating day of many of these guys’ lives as they literally get their asses handed to them by a toddler in a diaper. They have guns and a ton of manpower and everything, but nope, this kid gets the better of them. They manage to capture him in the end though, and they put him back in their secret lab, which is literally labeled ‘secret lab’ on their computers, because…I guess they figured it would be too obvious if they made a Facebook page for it.

Yes, this little tyke is named Sly, and we soon see that he can talk to the other little children at the research lab through some incredibly fake looking superimposed lips in a language all their own. Their dialogue is so stupid that I’d rather listen to a power drill for an hour and a half:

Sly: We have to use our secret weapon.

Basil: And what's that?

Sly: Duby - What's the one thing grown-ups fear most about us babies?

Duby: Dirty Diapers!

Sly: You're wrong!

Duby: Well they make those stupid faces when they change our diapers!

Sly: Its our Intelligence everyone, Our Intelligence... Dirty Diapers... that's funny though.

Apparently before age two…okay, hold on. I can’t write this. I honestly fear I will get stupider if I write this next part. Give me a second.

Okay, let’s just get it over with in one shot, like taking really bitter medicine: Before age two, babies actually know all the secrets of the universe and can communicate them with one another in a highly complex language. Then after age two they ‘cross over’ and lose all the knowledge they had.

…this is probably one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard in any movie I’ve literally ever watched, but for the sake of brevity, I’m not going to rant about it. Nope, I’m just going to…skip over that rant, because I’m still not quite over Exorcist II yet and don’t feel like getting worked up over this crap. Instead, I just have one question: if these kids are supposed to be babies, like little babies, then why do they all look like five year olds instead of one year olds? Just look at this. I don’t know who they thought they were going to fool, but it’s like they shot themselves in the foot with their own ridiculous plot device! The kids aren’t able to communicate and know the universe’s secrets anymore after age two, but look at these kids! They’re at least three or four at the latest! Come on, at least give us a little bit of consistency!

Oh yeah, and the assistant scientist is played by Christopher Lloyd. Wow. For some reason I get the idea he won’t be listing this in his acting resume in the future!

Okay, so we see two parents played by Kim Cattrall and Peter MacNicol, who are the unknowing foster parents of Sly’s secret twin brother Whit. They’re attending a banquet for the opening of an indoor theme park run by BabyCo., the company that is doing all those secret experiments on babies that we saw in the opening. The leader of this corporation is Elena Kindle, who is Cattrall’s aunt and who literally just comes out and says, “We are dedicated to proving that babies have a language of their own.” Wow. Just…wow. I can’t even make a joke about something that silly.

Also, tell me this isn’t going to show up in your nightmares tonight, I dare you:

People let their child go near that? That's not funny that's disturbing as hell.

So after a pointless sequence showing us the random amusement park attractions we’ll never see again, we go back to MacNicol’s house where we see a random bus driver played by Dom DeLuise and a random nurse…babysitter…maid lady too. Why are they there? I don’t know. Why is this kid there?

I don’t know. Guess what the key word is? RANDOM! Try actually defining your characters next time, guys!

So then we see exactly what the intelligence of little Whit is. Dom DeLuise asks him to hand him the hammer to fix the sink, and Whit tosses the hammer right on his balls. That’s great, kid; really great. You…probably just damaged the man for life, but HUH HUH HUH, at least it’s funny!

Then Sly, after at least five or six more attempts, actually manages to escape from BabyCo and go out into the world. He for some reason switches clothes with a little girl…that’s pretty friggin’ weird…and gets into a mall to try on some different clothes. He dresses up in all kinds of ridiculous costumes that your parents would show your girlfriend to embarrass you before your prom night, and even does a dance number, because I guess this movie needed some more fodder for the trailer.

Oh yeah he's a regular dance floor veteran, this kid right here.

Somehow, without any rational explanation, Sly and Whit coincidentally get mixed up the next day while crawling around in a playpen and wearing clothes that are almost identical. Of course first we get some shots of Sly beating up these wonderfully competent bodyguards trying to catch him again…because that’s not old by now…but then we see exactly how serious Christopher Lloyd is about his work. He looks into that wide-angle lens shot at Whit and says, “You’re interfering with our great work!”

"Marty! We need to go back in time and slap me for taking this goddamn role!"

Well, great work, then! I had no idea! Seriously, shut up you hack, you can talk after you stop getting outsmarted by a little boy who still isn’t out of the diaper stage yet. You’re being upstaged by the unfunny version of the Rugrats, for Pete’s sake. You have no place to act self-righteous at all. How did you even go from making a time-traveling DeLorean to working on super smart babies anyway? You’re breaking my heart here, Mr. Lloyd! You’re breaking my heart!

By the way, this is the real reason that recession happened in 2008. Because the government was spending all their money doing stupid shit like…making genius babies for years and years! Doesn’t that make you proud to be an American?

So apparently, and take notes here, MacNicol can read the kids’ lips and magically understand what they’re saying in their…mystical baby-language. He talks to them in the same manner that people talked to Lassie in those old TV shows. And it’s stupid. And nobody ever thinks to question this beyond just looking at him a little funny?

We see some ridiculous shots of the parents having a diaper changing contest for no real reason, because I guess that’s just how they have fun in this world. Insipid. And then we get this joke:

Margo: Stick to your rapping Ice Shtick and leave the smart remarks to those with IQs over 40.

Dickie: It's not rap, it's mantras.

Margo: I was chanting mantras before you were born.

Dickie: [pause] You were chanting mantras before Buddha was born.

Margo: That's pretty good, Dickie, that's pretty good.

No, no it is not. Please go shoot yourselves. Both of you.

Oh, and there’s also some crap in there where apparently Sly and the other kids hypnotize Dom DeLuise and Dickface, or whatever his name is, to pick their noses and roll their tongues around.

THIS IS WHERE THE MONEY FOR YOUR SUPER-INTELLIGENCE EXPERIMENTS IS GOING, GUYS.

Elena stages a plan to move all the babies to Lichtenstein after just one experiment doesn’t work out, and we see Sly mobilizing the forces of all the babies he can find using psychic powers that he apparently has. God…I’m getting dumber as I type these words, just thinking about this again. Elena tries to kidnap the babies but is foiled by Sly and his…weird army of psychic babies that he trained. You know, he actually mobilizes weapons to attack these guys on the ground. That’s not funny and charming, you guys. That’s actively scary. What’s he going to be like when he gets older?

Eugh. So we see Elena taking personal pride in her victory over these little toddlers, because…I guess she’s not getting laid at all. Or something. Seriously, lady, they’re still just little kids at the end of the day. You look more like a bully than anything. But wait! We have an angry mother coming out to beat the ever-loving daylights out of this wannabe Cruelle DeVille, and saving the day once and for all!

Baby Geniuses…holy hell, where do I even start? Oh, right. THE PLOT IS FRIGGIN’ STUPID. I mean come on! Babies know all the secrets of the universe? Like hell! Even the movie can’t even convince itself of that, since we never see or hear any of these supposed ‘secrets’ coming out of those babies’ mouths! And how are we supposed to believe for even one second that these kids can constantly outsmart all the adults working at these super-secret, high tech scientific facilities…

You know what? Screw it. I’m not even going to bother. Because you know how the old saying goes, anyone who tries to argue with a retarded film like Baby Geniuses is no better themselves. Or…or something like that.

P.S., support the March of Dimes and help improve infant health! Just click below:

www.marchofdimes.com