Sunday, August 28, 2011

Sharktopus!

Posted by Matt


Since my part of North Carolina stayed above water, I decided to celebrate with the copy of Sharktopus I impulse-bought for five bucks. It's one of those SyFy original cheesy monster movies in the vein of my beloved Komodo vs. Cobra, only this time their most popular actor is Eric Roberts, whose IMDB entry is too long for my attention span but failed to register a single memorable role for me. But I am excited for CGI cheese, so I watched it anyway.


We open with some cheesecake beach scenes, and this blonde is swimming and gets chased by a terrible CGI shark, but she's in luck because it gets eaten by the bigger CGI Sharktopus, which is pretty much shark from the waist up and then lots of tentacles, and the Sharktopus doesn't eat the girl because some little light on its back turns from red to blue. And then we bounce into the secret government science facility where Eric Roberts exposits that the light signals government behavior controls. I kind of want Eric Roberts to have that light on his back, and when he drops leaden dialogue, I could zap him into quality acting.

Umm, but then they do a field test where they make the Sharktopus attack a random speedboat, and the light turns from red to blue but this time it means, Yes, please do eat people. Because the government is evil. And those of you who think it will take more than ten seconds for the speedboat to somehow knock the equipment loose and turn it into a reckless killing machine? You will not get much out of my recap.

Ooo, in the first attack on humans, we learn that it's not just a shark with eight tentacles - it's a shark with eight POINTY tentacles that skewer distracted extras. Bet that upgrade seemed like a good idea at the time. The sea monster in hooker heels sashays down to Mexico, where the government science team finds some hot guy to hunt it down with some grenade launcher dart thingies. In parallel, some hot, sassy investigative reporter with an Eliza Dushku vibe is trying to find it first. Her interview style is mostly shoving her boobs at people and yelling at them for staring - I like her and hope that she doesn't get eaten before the third act.

Sharktopus eats some more Mexican tourists, including a cute scene where it jumps out of the water to eat a bungee jumper like a worm on a line. That Sharktopus has some moxie. If it ends up King Konging the reporter, I will be fine with that. She's filming an interview and manages to document Sharktopus eating a beachful of white tourists and proving it can walk on land on its tentacles. This should be scary but is in fact sort of cute. Imagine a cranky puppy.

The hot hunter guy leads a SCUBA team to try to get Sharktopus, but it outsmarts them and eats everyone but the hunter. It's cute even when the CGI quality reaches cartoon-level. This is hardly a good movie, but it's watchable and fun, with only half the guilt of Birdemic. The hunter's boat encounters the reporter's boat amidst a Sharktopus attack, and he rescues her, so Sharktopus soothes himself by snacking on more white people at the closest resort. At least it's not on drugs. Or cutting.

Blah blah blah bite bite stabbystab dead white people, and now we've got the hunter on a boat with, of course, one magic dart left, and Sharktopus climbs up a beach to chomp through a resort. It's CGI chaos, fizzy and fantastic. And Eric Roberts shows up to try to save the monster for further government evil... Yeah, it eats him. This movie is not really about surprises... But I am a little surprised that the reporter shows back up to join forces with the hunter and track it to where it's pulling tourists off ziplines. 

And then it eats her. Sad...

But at least it inspires hot hunter guy to throw his shirt off and have a spear fight with a CGI shark crawling around on a beach. So you win some. And he and his abs manage to blah blah computer skills blah AND THE SHARKTOPUS EXPLODES!

I'm glad I watched it. Worth the impulse buy, and a great way to justify some popcorn on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Now, if someone wants to make Sharktopus: The Musical, I am willing to discuss investment...

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