Low_Roads
4th Level Black Feather
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2004
- Messages
- 8,986
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- 48
Hiya kiddies! Saturday matinee time! Inspired by the general enthusiasm for the Syfy original title "Sharknado" (including a surprising Tomato Meter rating somewhere in the 90s), I decided to pick up the dvd last Tuesday and see what all the shouting was about. Walmart must have all sorts of faith in its popularity... they had over 20 copies on hand, more than I can recall having seen for any previous dvd release. I've tried to be circumspect with my appraisal... all the same, there may be spoilers herein. Read at your own risk.
The shark, Satan love him, must have the worst or best press agent in the world, depending on your outlook. Thirty years after Steven Spielberg turned him into the devil incarnate, he's had no chance to break out of his airtight typecasting as fiendish, soulless supervillain. That would have killed off many careers, but the resilient squalis has worked steadily ever since. If one tires of him in his native element, screenwriters have obligingly relocated him onto land with such titles as Super Shark (in which he's big as an office building, flops along the beach like a seal, and takes on a four-legged walking tank), Sandsharks (where the titular menaces glide through dunes as effortlessly as they might breakers), or the renowned Sharktopus (whose cephalopod lower half allows him to shamble spider-like after party goers). And now they've branched him out to conquer the very element of air in Sharknado.
My confidence in any DVD entertainment stemming from the Syfy channel isn't high. I've been burned too many times by lazy scripting and chintzy production values. The high-concept element of Sharknado, however, is so over-the-top that I would have been tempted to try it even without all the ballyhooing. And to be fair, the film does a most credible job in exploiting its two ridiculously outlandish premises, (1) that rising ocean levels, caused by global warming (an excuse trotted out with the perfunctory disinterest that '50s sci-fi used to blame monsters on nuclear radiation) would allow ravenous sharks to patrol LA streets as though they were in canals, and (2) that a trio of water spouts could suck up a vast quantity of the beasties to become infernal carousels of destruction which either deposit their fishy missiles onto cast members with unlikely pinpoint accuracy or strip the flesh off anyone luckless enough to venture too close. The images aren't always convincing (the sharks on display are pretty ill-defined and lumpish), but there're plenty of them, practically a wall-to-wall presentation. You won't get bored waiting for the spectacle to start, as is all too often the case with these cheese-fests. I'm thankful, too, that the story is presented rather straight, without the knowing, annoying snark that's often slathered over such projects to guard against criticism ("It doesn't matter if the premise is out to lunch... it's a parody, see!") Charles Griffith could make that approach work for Roger Corman, but most writers today, especially in quickie projects like this, don't have the chops for it.
That said, I could only wish the framework of the storytelling was less rote. We spend the whole of 90 minutes with these heroes, heroines and assorted supporting cast... god forbid they should be actually engaging. Alas, the characters are all off-the-rack... our hero, a middle-aged hunk who doesn't shave very well. He's stuck with a bunch of marital issues in place of personality. The primary girly is a slice of definition-free California plastic... big rack, with a convenient shark attack history to explain. Two further curvy examples (the hero's estranged wife and daughter) show up later and all function fairly interchangeably. As for "colorful" types, yeah, there are a handful. Expect them to be would-be amusing and eaten, in that order. Oh, and our hero has an older, Australian Quint-like buddy... wonder if he's gonna make it all the way to the end. I don't ask for Shakespeare necessarily, but I would appreciate a bit more effort from the scriveners. To be fair, I've encountered casts far more irritating in other films of this type. It's not so much that these people leave a bad impression as that they leave no impression at all. Not a thing they say or do will resonate after the end credits roll. Conversely, the plot goes out of its way to pile on glaring, outlandish coincidence. The ocean level does, as indicated, rise, but in the most selective way imaginable. It's as though the elements had a personal grudge against our protagonists, trailing them specifically and (in an unintentionally hilarious scene) washing away their hillside suburban home while leaving those of their neighbors untouched. Toward the picture's climax, the survivors locate a cache of chainsaws, the b-movie's visceral weapon of choice, while a helicopter drops homemade bombs into the whirlwinds to diffuse them (those living in Tornado Alley can take heart that twisters can be squelched so simply). At every pass, contrivance rules and credibility is in short supply.
But demanding credibility may be asking too much from an ankle-deep trifle of this sort. For what it aspires to be, Sharknado does indeed deliver the goods in relatively painless fashion. If you've ever hungered to see great whites and hammerheads cruising downtown avenues (in about a foot of water, no less), you'll certainly see it here. Keen for the image of a man leaping into plummeting open-wide jaws with a fired-up chainsaw? In slow-motion? Hell, you can actually thrill to that in the trailer! And thrill to it a few more times I probably will. Sharknado may not be the most edifying viewing experience around, but it is harmless, goofy fun, whose most ridiculous features are handled with a bold commitment I can't help but admire. Take that, Jaws 3D!
The shark, Satan love him, must have the worst or best press agent in the world, depending on your outlook. Thirty years after Steven Spielberg turned him into the devil incarnate, he's had no chance to break out of his airtight typecasting as fiendish, soulless supervillain. That would have killed off many careers, but the resilient squalis has worked steadily ever since. If one tires of him in his native element, screenwriters have obligingly relocated him onto land with such titles as Super Shark (in which he's big as an office building, flops along the beach like a seal, and takes on a four-legged walking tank), Sandsharks (where the titular menaces glide through dunes as effortlessly as they might breakers), or the renowned Sharktopus (whose cephalopod lower half allows him to shamble spider-like after party goers). And now they've branched him out to conquer the very element of air in Sharknado.
My confidence in any DVD entertainment stemming from the Syfy channel isn't high. I've been burned too many times by lazy scripting and chintzy production values. The high-concept element of Sharknado, however, is so over-the-top that I would have been tempted to try it even without all the ballyhooing. And to be fair, the film does a most credible job in exploiting its two ridiculously outlandish premises, (1) that rising ocean levels, caused by global warming (an excuse trotted out with the perfunctory disinterest that '50s sci-fi used to blame monsters on nuclear radiation) would allow ravenous sharks to patrol LA streets as though they were in canals, and (2) that a trio of water spouts could suck up a vast quantity of the beasties to become infernal carousels of destruction which either deposit their fishy missiles onto cast members with unlikely pinpoint accuracy or strip the flesh off anyone luckless enough to venture too close. The images aren't always convincing (the sharks on display are pretty ill-defined and lumpish), but there're plenty of them, practically a wall-to-wall presentation. You won't get bored waiting for the spectacle to start, as is all too often the case with these cheese-fests. I'm thankful, too, that the story is presented rather straight, without the knowing, annoying snark that's often slathered over such projects to guard against criticism ("It doesn't matter if the premise is out to lunch... it's a parody, see!") Charles Griffith could make that approach work for Roger Corman, but most writers today, especially in quickie projects like this, don't have the chops for it.
That said, I could only wish the framework of the storytelling was less rote. We spend the whole of 90 minutes with these heroes, heroines and assorted supporting cast... god forbid they should be actually engaging. Alas, the characters are all off-the-rack... our hero, a middle-aged hunk who doesn't shave very well. He's stuck with a bunch of marital issues in place of personality. The primary girly is a slice of definition-free California plastic... big rack, with a convenient shark attack history to explain. Two further curvy examples (the hero's estranged wife and daughter) show up later and all function fairly interchangeably. As for "colorful" types, yeah, there are a handful. Expect them to be would-be amusing and eaten, in that order. Oh, and our hero has an older, Australian Quint-like buddy... wonder if he's gonna make it all the way to the end. I don't ask for Shakespeare necessarily, but I would appreciate a bit more effort from the scriveners. To be fair, I've encountered casts far more irritating in other films of this type. It's not so much that these people leave a bad impression as that they leave no impression at all. Not a thing they say or do will resonate after the end credits roll. Conversely, the plot goes out of its way to pile on glaring, outlandish coincidence. The ocean level does, as indicated, rise, but in the most selective way imaginable. It's as though the elements had a personal grudge against our protagonists, trailing them specifically and (in an unintentionally hilarious scene) washing away their hillside suburban home while leaving those of their neighbors untouched. Toward the picture's climax, the survivors locate a cache of chainsaws, the b-movie's visceral weapon of choice, while a helicopter drops homemade bombs into the whirlwinds to diffuse them (those living in Tornado Alley can take heart that twisters can be squelched so simply). At every pass, contrivance rules and credibility is in short supply.
But demanding credibility may be asking too much from an ankle-deep trifle of this sort. For what it aspires to be, Sharknado does indeed deliver the goods in relatively painless fashion. If you've ever hungered to see great whites and hammerheads cruising downtown avenues (in about a foot of water, no less), you'll certainly see it here. Keen for the image of a man leaping into plummeting open-wide jaws with a fired-up chainsaw? In slow-motion? Hell, you can actually thrill to that in the trailer! And thrill to it a few more times I probably will. Sharknado may not be the most edifying viewing experience around, but it is harmless, goofy fun, whose most ridiculous features are handled with a bold commitment I can't help but admire. Take that, Jaws 3D!
