May. 30, 2012 - Issue #867: Nextfest 2012
Piranha 3DD
The hehe-boobs joke of the title suggests some silly self-awareness, but the movie's only fun in the same way the concept of a rollercoaster is, in theory, fun: you ride the rails, go up and down for a while and walk away thrilled with yourself. But this ride's a rickety letdown: director John Gulager—whose other credits are for a direct-to-DVD horror series called Feast—can't quite tease out either the comedy or horror of the scenario, instead letting the two wash over each other until they make one indistinguishable muddle.
The threadbare plot is that Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) comes home from school for the summer to find that her stepdad's staffed the family waterpark with strippers, then piranhas show up. During the film's play out, a who's who of has-beens parade across the screen as distractions, making reference to their former selves: Christopher Lloyd plays the crazy old scientist whose theories are right, David Hasslehoff plays himself as a celebrity lifeguard. The 'Hoff has the best line in the entire film, actually: standing before the park's gates in a suit, face like a blank canvas, he says to himself: "Welcome to rock bottom." It's supposed to be a self-aware dig at his own career, surely, but it rings just as true for just about everybody involved in this movie.
Opens Friday
Directed by John Gulager vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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