I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

AW C'MON MISS MURDER, YOU ACTUALLY LOOKED FOR FACTS TO DO THIS REVIEW? IT'S A SYFY ORIGINAL MOVIE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, WASN'T THERE ENOUGH TO LAUGH AT WITHOUT GETTING ALL TECHNICAL?



Sharknado (2013)

Yes. Yes there was. In fact, that's why I watched the movie in the first place - so many people have been talking about it, especially with the release of Sharknado 2: The Second One... <laughs and gets soda up nose> umm, excuse me a minute...

<Coughing>  Okay, so I missed the last umpteen years of Shark Week so I know practically nothing about them except when they're used in movies they're either huge beyond reality, or <starts coughing again> falling out of the sky. Sharks, although related to fish, are not fish but neither are they mammal. That means they DO NOT BREATHE AIR. They must depend on saltwater passing through their gills to get oxygen - that means they must always be moving. But unfortunately they didn't move fast enough to escape this movie. Oh and contrary to this movie, they would not survive in a chlorinated swimming pool, fresh water, or the sewer either.

Now Sharknado is incredibly easy to make fun of. In fact, it's gained kind of a cult status of people doing just that. It also seems to do something to the mind though. The hubby started watching it with me and after 20 minutes he said 'I'm done.' So the next day I thought I'd finish it. Woof. I have never... then the hubby found out I finished it and said 'I thought we were going to watch it together.' Umm, what? 

Okay. I said, "Let's start from the beginning and watch the whole thing, the ending's the best (because it's the end - pffft)." We sat and watched and after 20 minutes (Where have I heard this before?) he said 'I'm done.' 'No no no no... you have to watch to the end, that's the big payoff.' He groaned and rolled his eyes but watched it to the end. And then said, 'Why did you have me watch this? I NEVER want to see this again. I can't believe...'


So my only conclusion is that Sharknado must cause slight bleeding in the brain that leads to memory loss. He didn't remember not wanting to watch it, then wanted to watch it, then asked why he watched it when it was done. I kept a close eye on him for the rest of the weekend, looking for bleeding from the ears (or clear liquid, that's bad too) or nosebleeds. Other than a zombie-like trance for a day or two, he seems to have recovered.

Hmm? The movie? Oh man, if you haven't seen it... you've missed absolutely nothing. We have TV has-beens (even cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch... ewww) getting together to overact (or not act at all) as a 'freak' hurricane has caused waterspouts, sucking up all different kinds of sharks (some with remoras still attached to 'em) and dumping them on Los Angeles. I don't know how they noticed.

What country are we in now?

There has been much 'discussion' about this film and I don't get it. Yeah, it was absolutely terrible - in plot, special effects and continuity. In fact, I scoured the credits for a Continuity Editor just so I could smear his/her name up to the sky the sharks supposedly fell from - there was none. At least none that would put their name on the credits. 

I understand completely. When there's a movie where it's wet-dry-wet-flooded-dry-wet etc., nobody wants their name on that. One of my favorites was a small one - the 'heroes' are in their car and the sprinkler guys have water hitting the car so heavy the wipers are on as fast as they can go... as dry bits of paper fly around them. <Laughs - keeping coke safely out of reach...>

Okay, for those of you who would rather pass on this incredibly non-scientific piece of celluloid, here's the movie: Fin <Get it?> (Ian Ziering) owns a bar on the coast. We have his friend Baz (Jaason Simmons), a barmaid with a large but stylish scar on her thigh named Nova (Cassie Scerbo), and rounding out the only characters in the bar we're supposed to watch is a very drunk (and very misplaced actor) George (bafflingly played by John Heard).

Now, a hurricane is coming but that doesn't mean anything to the idiots on the beach and in the water. And why should it? One second they show obvious stock footage of waves out of Hawaii, the next it looks like a pond - flat. One second the sun is shining without a cloud in the sky, the next second, clouds and wind. But then BOOM! A shark flies through the window of the bar and the party's over.


Biff.. uh, I mean Fin decides to get his 'family' - ex-wife April (Tara Reid), daughter Claudia (Aubrey Peeples), and son Matt (Chuck Hittinger). When the barmaid Nova meets Fin's ex-wife, out of the blue she sputters, "I am not a stripper." Where did that come from?

Personally, as much as the women bitched, I would have ditched them and just grabbed the boy. Tara Reid does a stellar job of acting (I wish there was a 'sarcasm' font) as she watches her new boyfriend get chomped by a shark and doesn't even blink. One fake scream, then practically a shrug. Must have been too much botox there to actually make a real expression. It was fun watching her hair change constantly though. Must have stopped at every salon they passed.

So we've got family, Baz, Nova and George. That's too many people - somebody's gotta die. George goes first. The shark that ate him probably had to go to rehab afterward. Oh yeah that reminds me - and I'm not the only one to mention this - do NOT make a drinking game out of the movie. You'll be in the hospital (or the morgue) from the first 20 minutes.

The group stops at a liquor store (uh oh) which is really like a 7/11 with hard liquor. Nova and the daughter search the shelves that have just about been wiped clean, where Nova picks up... bandage rolls. Sounds logical. April skulks off to the corner of the store where the sundries are in perfect order without a single product missing and picks up... the same box of bandage rolls. Really?

Fin plays the hero next, so his family can realize that hey, they don't have a man in the house anymore (hell, they don't have a HOUSE anymore), so they need a man. I guess. He saves a bus full of children by rappelling down from a bridge with all the gear that any ex-surfing pro and bar owner keeps in his vehicle, you know, just in case. 

Baz gets to show his incredible strength (not to mention how much weight that truck bumper could handle) by working the rope and pulleys but obviously using no muscle to pull the rope at all. Skip ahead and the kids are rescued - and in an ambulance - all of them. Uh huh. Not there to help, just there for the magic blankets, right?


So. Fin's boy is going to flight school and is the only one of the people hiding inside (where they should have stayed) who doesn't get munched by the magical sharks that not only fall out of the sky, but don't need to breathe water, don't splat on the ground, and are still pissed enough to eat anybody they fall on. Yeeeeah. I don't know who had the great idea of using homemade bombs (cute, guys) to 'stabilize' a tornado but hey, this movie's gotta end. Soon. Very soon.


As the boy and Nova go in the air with a helicopter to detonate some bombs without getting sucked into the tornado themselves or blown out of the sky by the explosions, on the ground we're whittling down survivors. They got into a machine shop and now have chainsaws and... sigh. Fin shows his might, his courage, his wit, his green screen acting skills as he uses one to saw a falling shark lengthwise clean in half. No shit. Woof.


Baz has got to go, we like him too much and he's got more character than all the others put together so - he's dead. Some made fun of his seemingly constantly changing accent but either he did it on purpose or he's a bit mixed in the head - he said in the movie he was Tasmanian (and, in reality, he was born and raised there) so... meh.


Back to the idiots in the helicopter. They seem to triumph at first - until Nova falls out and gulp! She falls right down the gullet of a shark that continues its journey to the ground. Matt says 'Noooooo!' like he's known her for years instead of ten minutes, tops. Then he starts to lose control of the 'copter. It goes down in smoke (well, a much smaller, probably radio controlled toy helicopter does anyway)... until it almost reaches the ground. Then the smoke is all gone, it turns back into the first helicopter and it makes a gentle landing. Pffft...

Fin realizes that the last bomb didn't work so he takes a truck with nitro on board that they stole where Baz put all the other bombs, drives it toward the tor... uh, sharknado and lights a bomb (don't ask), hits the nitro button and he jumps out.


Okay, except that they already used the nitro to outrun a cop that chased them... for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Unless they had an extra nitro canister... sigh. And... boom goes the dynamite. Sharks are now falling everywhere. Not splatting, not splitting apart into a thousand pieces, they're coming down mean and hungry. And really, really, fake.

And this one is just horrible: When the sharks do their swan dive out of the sky, one flies towards the front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre (which is showing the laughable The Asylum's mockbuster Hansel and Gretel - their copy of Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters)... and disappears (because the CGI was crafted by monkeys). It lands (still invisible) and makes an imprint of its body on one of the sidewalk squares, joining all the other important stars of Hollywood - most notably, the square in front of it which says it belongs to Steven Spielberg. Did you get the joke? Huh? Huh? Huh? Didja? Huh?

Fin comes back to his now adoring family just in time to see a shark (that apparently they didn't quite have time to complete coloring in so it's spotty) coming straight for his daughter out of the air. Instead of stepping to the right or left, he grabs a chainsaw and... goes straight into the shark (most of the color done now) with the damned chainsaw on. He's been 'et. Aww. Oh but wait, this is the SyFy channel and he's in the next two movies so... We see blood spurting the wrong way as he uses the chain saw to cut himself out of the shark. 

See, normally chain saws send sawdust or whatever they're cutting to the back when they run... but that's not the DUH part. Excuse me, that wasn't the WORST DUH part. After he gets out, guess what? GUESS. IF YOU DON'T GUESS YOU DON'T GET ANY PUDDING. HOW CAN YOU HAVE ANY PUDDING IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR MEAT?


Uh, I got off track, sorry. Even though he went into the gullet, chain saw running, he managed NOT to cut... Nova, who he pulls out of the shark. How wonderful that the EXACT SAME SHARK that gulped her down also went for Fin. His son revives her (the others stand and watch, nice first aid guys) and he's deliriously happy. The daughter smiles for the first time. Fin and April kiss, shark blood and guts smeared between them. How... disgusting.

And the movie ends. Fin. No, really, they actually used Fin to end this horrible excuse of a movie - abysmal even for The Asylum. And there's gonna be two more - but I think I'll pass. Oh, and to Ian Ziering's credit, the reason he did this movie? So he would earn enough to qualify for the Screen Actors Guild health insurance for his family. So much for Obamacare.