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| YOU WILL BELIEVE A SHARK CAN FLY AND IF YOU BELIEVE THAT I'VE GOT A BROOKLYN BRIDGE I CAN SELL YOU CHEAP! |
Dir. Anthony C. Ferrante
Starring: Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, Vivica A. Fox, Judd Hirsch, Robert Kline, Robert Hays, Billy Ray Cyrus, Perez Hilton, Kelly Ripa, Al Roker, Kari Wuhrer, Wil Wheaton
Review By Greg Klymkiw
Inclement weather hits the New York-bound flight from L.A. Never fear, though. Robert Hays (Airplane!) is the pilot. But, wait! What's that we see out the window?
Oh, Jesus! No!
SHARKS!
This is more than mere inclement weather. This is that meteorological phenomenon which hit L.A. last year. It's a sharknado - a tornado so fierce it rips thousands of sharks out of the ocean and has them whipping around within the funnels of H2O, allowing for extra propulsion to dive at their targets, jaws agape, lusting to ingest whatever their tummies desire.
Within the first ten-or-so minutes of Anthony C. Ferrante's Sharknado 2: The Second One. a passenger is decapitated by a shark (in the plane), our leading lady (Tara Reid) has her hand bitten off by a shark (in the plane) and the pilot is swallowed whole when a shark crashes into the cockpit (uh, you guessed it, in the plane), until our stalwart hero from the first Sharknado (Ian Ziering) commandeers the controls, dodging hundreds of hungry airborne sharks until he can safely crash-land the airplane.
Alas, New York is about to be hit with a shit-storm of sharks because frankly, there's not one, but two - count 'em - TWO sharknados headed for the Big Apple from opposite directions like mega, funnel-shaped Twin Towers threatening to collide with each other in the heart of Times Square. And as we watch, mouths agape, we realize we're about to participate in what might be one of the most gloriously ludicrous monster movies of all time.
The first Sharknado was happily stupid. Sharknado 2 grabs a nursing sow by the teats and begins pulling maniacally like Quasimodo the Notre Dame bell ringer. Whereas the first titty twister of a Sharknado was so awful it was good, our followup picture is so good, it's hard to believe how awful it truly is - but in all the right ways - and possibly in ways that might actually be good. At a certain point, surrealism overtakes the whole affair and your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not the picture is endowed with considerable merit (or not, or whatever, it doesn't matter). Director Ferrante and screenwriter Thunder (Surely Not His Real Name) Levin have us soiling ourselves from beginning to end, not out of fright, but because the movie is genuinely funny.
Where writer Not His Real Name excels beyond the preposterous genius and variety of tornado-propelled shark attacks are some of the finest lines of dialogue ever scribed in an awful movie. My favourite, by far is when our bland leading man visits our bland leading lady in the hospital where she's recovering from a shark biting off her hand (yes, she's the one, the lassie who gets chomped by a shark in the plane in the first ten minutes), he attempts some levity meant to cheer her up, points to her bloodied, bandaged stump and remarks:
"The next time you offer to lend a hand don’t be so literal about it."
I'm still slapping my knee over that one, good golly gee. My other knee is also sissy-boy-slapped all to hell from laughter over seeing the head of the Statue of Liberty crash into downtown Manhattan and take out an unsuspecting bystander. Will wonders never cease? No, they don't. Witness, if you dare, our dreadful leading lady retrieve her hand from the jaws of a shark to get her wedding ring back.
This, I believe, is truly worthy of a full-on sissy-boy slap-party of guffaws.
With an atrocious leading man and equally abominable leading lady, a handful of fun supporting turns (notably Judd Hirsch as a cab driver) and the most ridiculous number of cameos by American pop culture icons (Billy Ray Cyrus, Kelly Ripa, Al Roker, etc.), there's no way anyone but some high-falutin' egg head is going to not love this tasty mound of fresh, steaming shark poop. The special visual effects are undeniably atrocious, but they're so unsparing in their sheer volume, that you occasionally convince yourself how great they are. Which, of course, they are most certainly not.
That, ladies and gentlemen, takes some doing and Sharknado 2: The Second One does it real good.
THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars
Sharknado 2: The Second One is available on an outlandishly rich Blu-Ray edition from VSC that includes 2 commentary tracks - TWO!!! - tons of behind the scenes featurettes, a genuinely fun and informative short on casting the cameos, a gag reel, extended and deleted scenes and gorgeously moronic cover art and menus. Feel free to order the movie directly via the appropriate Amazon links below and in so doing, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.
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