Review of Piranha 3DD (2012) by Caleb H — 04 Aug 2012

Alexandre Aja's remake of the 70's B-Movie Piranha was a hilarious, fun, and rightly over-the-top homage to the horror / exploitation film. It wasn't a horror comedy on the level of Scream or Shaun of the Dead, but it was fun.

Piranha DD (ho-ho, get it?) is the cinematic equivalent of that loud, mean frat guy who never says anything funny, gets violently drunk on occasion, and is always screaming about how much he loves tits.

I think there's more nudity and gore here than in Piranha, but I'm not sure because the camera-man is oft prone to epileptic seizures. When a movie features copious nudity, man-eating fish, and Katrina Bowden, and the best part of the proceedings is David fucking Koechner, you're in for something especially bad.

Fortunately, Piranha DD is only a meager 72 minutes long (82, if you count the ungodly long credits that proceed to steamroll the unfunny David Hasselhoff gag even further) so it never really has much time to wear out its' welcome.

The plot actually has some promise-young Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) returns to the water park she used to work at as a child, only to find her stepfather (Koechner) has turned it into an "adult" attraction, and worse, his illegal pumping-and-dumping procedures have attracted scores of lovable mutant piranhas.

Of course, the water park opens, and all hell breaks loose. Writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (the later Saw films) aren't especially known for their subtlety, and that's fine for a movie like this; but they seem lost on how to handle the piranhas.

There's an inspired bit involving a piranha egg hatching inside a girl which culminates in the fish stuck to her boyfriend's penis, a bizarre self-mutilation, and a hilarious punchline, but that's pretty much the high-point of the bloodletting.

Koechner is hilarious-there's an especially mean-spirited moment towards the end of the movie that made me snicker-but he doesn't have that much screen time. Cameos from Ving Rhames, Paul Scheer, Christopher Lloyd, and Gary Busey are wasted-and when was the last time ANYTHING wasted Gary Busey?! The Hasselhoff bit is funny for about three minutes, but quickly gets annoying when, during the "All Hell Breaks Loose" moment, we keep cutting back to The 'Hoff.

I understand self-parody, and I don't usually mind bizarre cameos, but there's really no point in turning the last third of a horror comedy into an extended David Hasselhoff joke. Of course, that's what you get from a movie that mines the comic gold of a retarded obese man having sex with an intake pump TWICE (seriously), AND still finds time to (badly) ape the Nightmare on Elm Street bath scene.

Yes, there's lots of nudity; you know what else has lots of nudity? Piranha (the first one), and a lot of it is from the beautiful Kelly Brook. My advice, go watch that movie again, and stay far away from this disappointing turd.

Unless you're a fan of David Koechner, or you want to see just how far a film can steamroll a one-note David Hasselhoff joke, avoid this film at all costs.