Review of Deep Blue Sea (1999) by Blake B — 14 Jul 2009

I think "Deep Blue Sea" works well as a comedy. You might not enjoy it if you can't laugh at it. Basically, everyone is trying so hard to survive and they get snuffed out insanely quickly and sometimes unexpectedly, and that's pretty funny. It doesn't seem to be taking itself too seriously, so you shouldn't either. I mean, just the fact that the heroine here takes off her wetsuit in order to ground herself on it seems to have been added strictly for titillation (as we are able to stare at her very nice, wet body for a good couple of minutes) especially when we see just a little while later how useless it was, for her in particular, to try so hard to survive in the first place.

There's a lot of good humor here, intentional and not, and it's highly enjoyable from that premise. Usually shark movies not named Jaws are filled with a bunch of actors no one has ever heard of and they're usually very poorly acted. Here we have some good character actors littered throughout who are competent enough in other movies to deliver a lot of bad dialogue convincingly enough and with a little humor mixed in. The opening sequence is funny specifically because it sets us up for another brainless-teenager, run-of-the-mill horror flick, and then it completely changes in an instant to something that's supposedly a little better thought out, with more adult stars rather than unknown teens with bodies.

Well, from a humor standpoint it works well, even though you have to forgive the preposterousness of a lot of it. Just forgive it already and enjoy it!