Review of Lake Placid (1999) by Halfwelshman — 21 May 2012

Lake Placid pays homage to (or rips off, depending on your point of view) numerous monster movies, but mostly it's trying to be Jaws with a crocodile, as demonstrated by everything from the film's story to its cinematography to its music.

Rip-off or not, it's pretty consistently entertaining throughout, with plenty of obligatory jumpy moments and dismemberment, decent creature effects, a good dose of black comedy, some pleasingly silly set pieces and a team of bickering idiots to follow as protagonists.

Less satisfying is the film's script, which is pretty crude, often bordering on dumb (particularly disappointing as it comes from the usually brilliant David E. Kelly), and all characters remain woefully two-dimensional throughout the film.

The cast's performances are of mixed quality - Bill Pullman and Bridget Fonda are both incredibly wooden, and their characters' relationship, which is meant to be the romantic core of the film, isn't believable in the slightest, but Brendan Gleeson is good, and Betty White looks as though she is having an immense amount of fun swearing like a sailor.

Lake Placid is probably the best of the 90s creature-features (though that's not saying much when your bedfellows are Arachnophobia and Anaconda), but at the end of the day you have to acknowledge that the film is utter trash.

It's largely quite enjoyable trash, but it's still trash all the same.