Forget the visual mastery of "Avatar," recently re-released with nine extra minutes of footage. "Piranha 3D" shows you how 3-D is REALLY supposed to be used: Ravenous fish, unspeakable gore and countless bouncing bosoms.
By any objective measure, "Piranha 3D" is not a good movie. The script is probably about three pages long, the acting is mostly terrible, and even the 3-D effects were added after the film was already shot.
It's pure trash … but it's not pretending to be anything else. As far as trash goes, it's extremely well made.
Set in a fictional spring-break hangout called Lake Victoria, "Piranha 3D" combines the violence of a good zombie or slasher movie with the gratuitous nudity of a "Girls Gone Wild" video.
Elisabeth Shue ("Leaving Las Vegas") slums it as a rather ineffective town sheriff whose main job is to control thousands of drunken college students.
Steven R. McQueen (the 22-year-old grandson of the real Steve McQueen and, interestingly, the stepson of hockey player Luc Robitaille) plays the sheriff's bland son Jake, who is reluctantly in charge of two younger siblings, er, tasty-looking fish morsels.
Jake, however, would rather help a sleazy soft-core porn producer — mind-bogglingly overacted by Jerry O'Connell — scout for locations.
As luck would have it, underground tremors unlock a prehistoric cavern containing a particularly nasty variety of piranha with 2-million-year-old appetites. Drunken college kids, though, are reluctant to leave the water under any circumstances, and a series of extremely vivid deaths and dismemberments follow.
The name cast includes Richard Dreyfuss with a glorified cameo at the movie's beginning — clearly playing off his "Jaws" character — and Christopher Lloyd as a daffy fish guru. Ving Rhames plays Shue's extremely tough deputy.
Though it's played for pure camp, "Piranha 3D" doesn't have as many laughs as it could, and its sole method of building suspense is showing the underwater fish-eye's view every time anyone ventures into the lake. Still, it's got enough gore and skin to put a smile on any 17-year-old boy's face.
The movie also DOES have a link to "Avatar": Visionary director James Cameron's first film was 1981's "Piranha Part Two: The Spawning," which was clearly inferior to "Piranha 3D." Take that Cameron!
Rental Recommendation: Richard Dreyfuss only has an amusing cameo in "Piranha 3D," but he can boast a considerably larger role in "Jaws." Grade: A+
E-mail Steve Ouellette at: ouellette1918@gmail.com
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