Monday, July 30, 2007

Shark Week: Better looking people than me edition

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 like 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. A solid 7 1/2 sharks chasing after your boat and the delicious people in it out of 10.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

o.k, I haven't seen this movie, but what! you gave it a higher score than Deep Blue Sea ? Ho wcan it be better than a movie in which Samuel L. Jackson gets attacked in the middle of giving a motivational speech? And from your reveiw, I didn't here about anything as cool as SHARKS IN HALLWAYS!
Deep Blue Sea RULES!

Unknown said...

OK, that's a fair question. Why did I give Spring Break Shark Attack a higher score than Deep Blue Sea. Well, while neither movie had much going for it, Deep Blue Sea had much more going against it. There were just too many characters and actions that didn't make any sense. And, to top it all off, the ending was just plain ridiculous. The movie spends so much time showing how the lady is OBSESSED with her research, only to have her sacrifice herself at the end. Now, this would be fine if they'd had some sort of moment of remorse on her part, but they didn't. So, her sacrifice is meaningless.

Spring Break Shark Attack had problems too, but mostly they were related to the characters being oblivious to their surroundings. I mean, if you're doing research out at sea, shouldn't you notice a giant shark swimming around in crystal clear water?

I just found there to be less crippling flaws in SBSA. That's all. And, from my perspective, it was a bit more enjoyable. And really, that's what it comes down to more than anything. I just didn't enjoy Deep Blue Sea as much as I enjoyed SBSA. And the scores reflect that.

Thanks for your question!