Piranha 3-D, a movie that, for some reason, I was incredibly excited to see. Think about it, what’s more entertaining than watching gorgeous topless girls being mauled by prehistoric fish? And what could go wrong with a reboot from Alexandre Aja, the man who brought us the remake of Hills Have Eyes (as well as his French-fare High Tension)? Apparently, a lot more can go wrong aside from opening up a can of piranhas.
A fisherman accidentally knocks a full beer can over the side of his boat, which proceeds to sink to the bottom of a lake. The can softly hits the bottom, which causes a fissure in the ground, thus releasing prehistoric piranhas on the scene. It should be understood that this film should be taken with a grain of salt, just as Roger Corman did in ‘78. Corman’s Piranha was a riff on Jaws, if not an outright parody of it. Regardless, this was probably the easiest way to unleash these beasties to all the partying teens above.
Plenty of people get mauled, and all sorts of limbs and orifices (sexual one at that) is where the kicker really lays. People get decapitated, ripped apart, the skin pulled off of their faces, eyeballs fly . . . a man even gets his penis bitten off, which a piranha spits out at the audience (this gag must have worked a lot better in 3-D). If you enjoy watching people die, then this is the film for you. If you like gigantic tits bouncing around, and then get covered in blood, this film is also for you.
What really sucks about this movie is the wasted cast. Ving Rhames is wasted as a sheriff who pulls a motor off of a boat and sticks it into the water to slice up some fishies, only that he gets eaten from all around. Why not try this stunt out of the water? Adam Scott (Party Down) is wasted as a diver who really brings nothing to the picture, except for dying after he supplies the first half to the films final joke. Christopher Lloyd acts as an eccentric paleoichthyologist, but it doesn’t really matter what that title means; just add -ist to the end of any profession and you’ll have the role we’re all used to by him. It seems that eccentric scientists is all he plays now . . . However, there is a great cameo by Cabin Fever and Hostel director Eli Roth as a DJ who carries around two giant water guns so he can plaster tight white shirts to the bodies of young girls. It’s fit that this maestro of gore has one of the best death scenes in the film.
The plot is lame, but it’s a movie about prehistoric piranhas, so I can’t complain. The wasted cast is what really bugs me most of all. There are lots of inconsistencies, like how the piranha travel in a pack, yet they seem to move from the teenage-infested beach to the sinking sailboat where the last quarter of the film takes place instantaneously. Piranha is a fun movie, but lacks in everything else, which, unfortunately, will make it a forgetful movie.