Piranha 3D
If for some reason you live in Oklahoma City and your travels have taken you near Penn Square Mall in recent days, then chances are you’ve seen the marquee advertisement for screenings of “Piranhas in 3D” overlooking the city’s Northwest Expressway.
That “Piranhas in 3D” is actually “Piranha 3D,” director Alexandre Aja’s remake of Roger Corman’s 1978 “Jaws” knock-off, is precisely besides the point.
In its way, Penn Square Mall’s Dickinson Theatres has laid bare what “Piranha 3D” brings to the summer movie table and anyone expecting more than piranhas wrecking havoc and mayhem—in 3D, of course— might do well to rethink their weekend movie plans.
Since “Piranha 3D” is rarely interested in anything more than winking and nodding, it seems fitting the film should begin with Richard Dreyfuss sitting alone in a boat in the middle of Lake Victoria, playing a character with the same name as he did in “Jaws.” As Matt fishes and sings along to the song playing on his small radio (guess which song, “Jaws” fans), an earthquake opens up an underwater passageway to an even larger lake far beneath the surface.
And, as a giant whirlpool created by the quake begins to engulf Mr. Dreyfuss, so, too, do a school of ancient piranha swim to the surface to greet him.
A remarkable sight to be sure, the image is surprisingly less terrifying than Aja’s earlier work (the much scarier and far better, High Tension, for example) suggests.
The killer, bloodthirsty fish unleashed, the film sets up the rest of what it considers its plot, focusing largely on Arizona Sheriff Julie Forester (Elisabeth Shue) and her son, Jake (Steven R. McQueen), while thousands of rambunctious college students descend on Lake Victoria as their spring break hotspot.
When a “Girls Gone Wild” Joe Francis knockoff, Derrick Jones (Jerry O’Connell), arrives to Lake Victoria and asks Jake to take his crew location scouting on the lake, the young teen agrees, abandoning the task entrusted to him by his single mother to babysit his two younger siblings in favor of spending time with the sexy models aboard Derrick’s ship.
As will happen, this decision triggers a further chain of events —Jake’s young brother and sister find themselves trapped on an island surrounded by piranha, Derrick talks Jake’s virginal crush, Kelly (Jessica Szohr), into joining them aboard his ship, etc.
Soon, Adam Scott shows up as a scientist—as does the delightful Christopher Lloyd as an eccentric marine biologist— to help Sheriff Forester and her deputy (the always reliable Ving Rhames) warn everyone of the underwater dangers lurking beneath Lake Victoria as “Piranha 3D” becomes a race against time and nature.
With its structure borrowed largely from the eighties slasher films that came after 1978’s “Piranha,” Aja’s remake comes across as equal parts morality tale and Grand Guignol, far more interested in punishing its characters’ sexual exploits and displaying Greg Nicotero’s amazingly gory special effects make-up than frightening anyone.
Gory excess makes “Piranha 3D” sparkle and it’s a shame the film never aims higher than spectacle and slasher retread.
More interesting, however, is the film’s setting, an Arizona overrun with the interlopers threatening its way of life, particularly in light of the anti-immigration rhetoric dominating the state’s politics this summer.
What, then, are we to make of monsters here, the “Piranhas in 3D,” as they set about cleaning house and our desire to see them do just that?
Such questions are considerably more interesting than “Piranha 3D” itself, a film whose 3D effects actually make it more difficult to tease out what exactly we’re seeing onscreen as the piranha attack their helpless victims. Much like the jackhammer-style camera work and editing in Michael Bay’s “Transformers” films, “Piranha 3D” has little time to waste anchoring audiences in the terror that surely comes with being ravaged by a school of cannibalistic piranha.
That’s too bad because I can’t escape the feeling that “Piranha 3D” deserved better, no matter how many severed penises I see a piranha burp up for our viewing pleasure.
