Review of Piranha 3D (2010) by Thegodfatherson — 18 Nov 2013

Somewhere near the end of Piranha 3D, as Ving Rhames was indiscriminately firing shotgun casings into the water and Jerry O’Connell was doing tequila shots off an eighty-five percent naked woman, I decided to award this film three stars.

This may seem like an unusually high number of stars for a gimmicky b-movie about piranhas attacking drunk college kids in the third dimension, but I happen to find a certain amount of honor in a film delivering exactly upon its promises.

Four stars, that would be ludicrous and two stars, that would imply Piranha 3D somehow disappointed. But three stars, that’s the right number for an aggressively pleasurable film involving cocaine, piranhas, inordinate amounts of nudity and Jerry O’Connell.

Sheriff Julie Forester (Elisabeth Shue) is a single mother in charge of the waters surrounding Lake Victoria, a seemingly quiet Arizona town annually invaded by throngs of douche bags and whores every Spring Break.

Julie puts her seventeen year old son Jake (Steven R. McQueen) in charge of watching his two little siblings so she can skim the waters for, I guess vomit, but this Babysitting Diaries plan goes awry almost immediately.

There are three problems. 1) An underwater earthquake has opened up a subterranean portal, releasing swarms of cannibalistic piranhas. 2) Porn producer Jerry O’Connell has enlisted her son as an impromptu location scout for his newest seedy film.

3) Nanny McPhee had a previous engagement, returning, somewhere else. Piranhas, like mastadons, like wildebeests and sometimes like boozed-up college kids on spring break, are ludicrous pack-traveling creatures who seem to lack long-term goals.

They exist only in the moment to satisfy the most basic of human or creature desires. This strikes me as a bad strategy for planning one’s retirement but a totally reasonable way to spend a Saturday night.

I fear the majority of reviewers will disagree with me, but fu*k them. Movies are about creating a story and telling said story in an entertaining or enlightening way. Never has a movie so overtly claimed to be about something and then been about that exact same something.

Here are three facts about Piranha 3D: 1) A piranha tears a woman’s swimsuit top off. 2) Adam Scott rides around in a jet ski pretending to be Rambo. 3) I will likely buy it on sale some time late next year for between $6.

99 and $8.99. If any of those hot facts made you roll your eyes, there are four other new releases opening in theaters this week for you to see.