Dir. Anthony C. Ferrante
Starring: John Heard, Tara Reid and a bunch of other people who appear to have acted in movies and television that nobody in their right mind will have even heard of, much less seen.
Review By Greg Klymkiw
A huge humdinger of a Hurricane-Katrina-like whirlwind is no common-variety tempest in a teapot. It results in mega tornados capturing every shark on the Pacific Coast and depositing thousands of the munchie-crazed-bastards in Lotus Land. A handful of non-characters become the film's prime focus as they battle the CGI threat of a lifetime. We watch, open-mouthed. as the most horrendous computer-generated sharks shoot out of the raging twisters to fill Sunset Boulevard - and they sure a shootin' are not looking to eat at Taco Bell. Nothing less than the human species will do for the main course.
That's it. No more. No less. Nothing else.
This utterly horrendous made-for-SYFY movie (which aired in Canada on SPACE) doesn't even have the distinction of being laughably awful. What it has in its favour is that it exists. The other thing in its favour is that, as stupid as the idea is, it's actually a pretty fun idea for what might have been a watchable, borderline surreal B-movie. I wish it were so, but the writing is abysmal, there's nothing remotely funny about it and the only thing that keeps you watching is to see how long your jaw will stay dropped at just how horrendous it actually is.
One of the more depressing elements of the movie is seeing the offbeat 70s/80s actor John Heard embarrass himself in the role of a drunk (a la Walter Matthau's similar cameo in Earthquake). Heard was never going to be anyone's idea of a big star and his bland qualities suggested he'd never be, uh, heard from, ever again. Still, he made a reasonable impression in movies like Paul Schrader's The Cat People, Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way, as Jack Kerouac in the kind of strange, kind of cool John Byrum-directed Beat Generation biopic Heart Beat and Joan Micklin Silver's Chilly Scenes of Winter. Watching him humiliate himself here for a paycheque can't even inspire me to crack a good joke or two at his expense.
Watching the movie, I just kept wondering why SYFY doesn't even try to make good movies. They don't have to be anything other than crap, but there's no reason why they can't be good crap?
The movie looks as good as it's ever going to look on Blu-Ray and the technology is so indelible in its image quality that it serves to make the special effects actually look worse than they are.
Still, I have to admit that I not only looked forward to watching it, but as I screened the picture, I could not take my eyes off it. I was never bored and managed to make it all the way through rather painlessly. This is hardly a ringing endorsement, but even from a dyed-in-the-wool genre freak like me, that's about the biggest endorsement I'll be able to bestow upon it.
Here's a nice quote I'm happy to offer for some future home entertainment release box art:
"I sat all the way through Sharknado and I'm embarrassed to admit it didn't bore me."
"Sharknado" is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from VSC - Video Service Corp.