Review: Piranha 3DD

PLOT: The mutated, man-eating piranhas are back, and this time- they’re munching on the visitors to a water-park owned by Chet (David Koechner), and his step-daughter Maddy (Danielle Panabaker).

REVIEW: “Welcome to rock bottom.” So says David Hasselhoff towards the end of PIRANHA 3DD, and boy- he wasn’t kidding. I was thinking the same thing to myself the second this “movie” started.

The Alexandre Aja PIRANHA film was probably a lot better than it ever should have been, but against all odds it worked, and worked well. It was a fast-paced, hilarious, gory summer treat- and obviously the Weinsteins wanted to cash-in on the goodwill left by it for a sequel. But, instead of getting back Aja, or the two leads (Adam Scott and Elizabeth Shue) that played a big part in the film working as well as it did, they’ve gone the bargain basement route with a film that should have never gotten a theatrical release.

Something tells me this must have been intended as DTV, as it’s one of the cheapest-looking films I’ve seen hit theatres in a while. Ok, I know- it’s a film about man-eating piranhas, how slick is it supposed to be? Fair enough- but this barely even qualifies as a film. It has an ugly, low-budget look, the amusement park setting is hopelessly boring next to the beachfront action in the last film, the 3D is so badly conceived that certain scenes will give you migraine inducing double vision, etc- the list goes on and on.

The one area where PIRANHA 3DD should have worked is the cast, which isn’t half-bad for a movie like this, and while Panabaker, and Matt Bush (who stars in the much better HIGH SCHOOL- also opening this weekend) are game- the script isn’t, and they get nothing to do. The cameos by Gary Busey, and David Hasselhoff, the latter of which should have been good for some easy laughs, come off as desperate rather than fun, and even a guy like David Koechner, who’s a funny guy- is left with nothing to do. Only Ving Rhames, who shows up in the last twenty minutes or so, manages to inject a little life into the film- but even he’s not enough.

Maybe the problem is that the tone changes from scene-to-scene. At times, it seems to want to be taken as a straight horror film (complete with the traditional nightmare/wake-up-screaming scene), but when it gets to the comedy it’s so dumb it’s like something out of a Friedberg/Seltzer movie. Even when we get to the climatic bloodbath (which was epic in Aja’s film), it’s on autopilot- and boring.

If you’re seriously thinking of spending 15 bucks on this, please, take my advice and give this a pass. It’s just awful- and sure, there’s some T&A, but even that (which is sleazy here, rather than fun as it was in the last film) doesn’t make this worth watching. Even the sight of Katrina Bowden in a bikini can’t save this, and that’s saying a lot!