I'm going to be completely honest with you. Last night, while I should have been watching some totally awesome shark movie to write about, I went to a baseball game. The good news is that the Tigers won! 4-2 over the Orioles. It was a mostly boring game up until the 8th inning, but Magglio Ordonez had a home run, and like I said, they won. So, it was a lot of fun in the end. After the game I went to the casino and *I* won! So, there was a lot of winning going on last night. Except on the Shark Week front. Which leads me to the bad news.I really have nothing to write about today. I could have come up with a list of some sort, but I think I've made it pretty clear over the years that I'm not very good at that. I could do a comparison between two sharks, but lets be honest, it's already been done (and a lot better than I could do).
So, I've decided to re-run a review from the original Shark Week. Enjoy.
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Let me start by warning you that Spring Break Shark Attack was a CBS made for TV movie. Knowing this myself, I watched it without very high hopes. Obviously the potential for lots of blood and gore and the like would be low. I mean, CBS, right? It's not like it's Fox or something.And besides, theres a five fin-to-one person shark ratio on the cover! Hello, McFly!! That means carnage!
Danielle is a college student, still living at home with her parents. It's spring break and her friends went down to Florida. Danielle, like, totally wants to go, but her dad is totally harshing her mellow and not letting her go. So, Danielle is all like, 'Well, I go to Habitat for Humanity' and dad is like 'Coo' and Danielle is all like 'Haha, I so lied' and goes to Florida anyways.
Once there, she meets up with her friends. They try on hats, and then go to the beach. I don't get it either, but, hey, whatever. Once at the beach, it's all about pretty people without much clothes on. It's all...very exciting.
Danielle's brother, who looks like a poor man's Luke Wilson, goes to school in the area, or something. Maybe he's a grad student. I wasn't really paying much attention. Whatever he is, he's doing research. On sharks. His research however has left him oblivious to the big fucking sharks swimming around his boat!
How do you miss that?
Come on! It's right fucking there, dude! It almost bit your fucking foot off!Danielle, while trying to find out where her brother is, meets a dude named Shane. He's a righteous dude. Seriously. Working to save up money for college. Not like these rich kids partying. Nope. He's working.
Danielle kind of digs this dude, but earlier, she met a guy named JT who is a massive douche bag. He seems like the kind of guy who would try to give a girl the roofies to get some, you know?
Well, that confirms THOSE suspicions.
Basically, the non-shark story is that Danielle is a virgin, and JT wants to get some. But Danielle likes Shane because he looks like a poor man's Jason Mewes. I guess. Or maybe it's because he's not some pretty boy like the others. He's 'deep'. He reads books without half naked ladies on the cover. JT, however, doesn't seem to like Shane. But, it's not like an antagonistic hatred, it's like an ambivalence. I don't get it. But, whatever.
They rent a boat from Shane's mom's company, so Shane, reluctantly, takes the gang out to sea. JT wants to go swimming and drags Danielle in, and then the rest of the gang jumps in, but suddenly...blood comes from under the boat, and then...the sharks arrive!! Woohoo!
However, sharks apparently are much like t-rexes in that they don't attack things that don't move, so by staying very still, Danielle survives long enough to get to the boat. That's not good enough though! The boat won't start! And the sharks aren't really leaving! OMG! What ever will they do!
Shane, luckily, gets the boat started, but it's broke and they'll never make it back to shore. There's an island nearby, though, so they head there for the night.
The sharks follow.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the ocean, Danielle's brother is finding a lot of half-eaten sea turtles. And the kids find themselves a half eaten human!
He used to be JT's friend. Aw. Now he's leftovers.Shane manages to get the boat going again and get them back to shore, but he also brought...some friends.
By friends I, naturally mean a metric shit ton of sharks.
And look! Lunch is ready! It's up to our three young adults to save the day now. Because, god forbid the authorities get involved or anything. Nope. 3 kids without a clue are going to save the beach!
But, not one will save JT. He's lunchmeat.
The kids manage a pied piper type strategy with a trail of fish guts to lead the sharks back out to sea, where they'll have to find a way to stop them from coming back to the beach!
This wasn't what I would call a great movie, by any means. But, it was fun. It could have been a hell of a lot worse. The story isn't very good, but you get to watch a bunch of kids who are better looking than you get killed by sharks. And while, as I said earlier, it's not very gory, there is a fair amount of blood around. Think about it though, Jaws wasn't exactly gory. It's kind of a goofy movie, made primarily to cash in on some vaguely familiar faces and a string of shark attacks a couple years ago. I'm okay with that though. And while the kids are playing archetypes as opposed to people, again, I'm okay with that. You have your virgin/heroine, the outsider/hero, the asshole/jerk. These are the characters that have been in every teen movie ever. You know what's going to happen before it begins, but it's still not bad. It's mindless, but not offensively so. It's worth a watch with a couple beers on a Friday night, that's for fucking sure.
