Dinoshark

I just saw it at the 6th Annual Puerto Vallarta Film Festival. I went basically because I live in PV and a few friends were possibly going to appear as extras. Given that it was a low-budget made-for-TV movie I was prepared to be disappointed. Instead I was entertained. It's a bit of an homage to "Jaws" in both the shark scenes and the musical score. Even with the bar set that high it still managed to achieve some of the same types of shocked reactions from the audience, while at other times they laughed. I'm not a connoisseur of B-movies but those that are should really get a kick out this film. And it was great to see producer Roger Corman in a cameo role as the marine biologist expert. I had the honor of shaking his hand as we left the theater. The cast was well anchored by Eric Balfour in the lead role. Perhaps this role will lead to bigger and better things for him. And finally it was nice to see a film in a theater, for a change, that had no foul language or gratuitous nudity. Taken in the context of its budget and its intended distribution, this is a pretty darn nice little movie.

Dinoshark (2010)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

When a big ice chunk in the Arctic breaks free, it lets loose a prehistoric shark, which swims down to Mexico where it begins to eat anyone who gets in its way. A couple people (Eric Balfour, Iva Hasperger) decide to try and track it down and kill it after their friend is killed by the beast but a local scientist (Roger Corman) thinks this thing might not be able to be stopped. DINOSHARK is yet another made-for-TV creature flick that manages to be quite boring even though there's non-stop action and plenty of red stuff to go around. If you've seen one of these movies then you pretty much know what to expect as we're always given some far-fetched story that really doesn't make too much sense and of course there's the bad CGI monster that looks so fake that you can't help but not connect to the movie. These type of "B" movies have been around for decades but it's pretty amazing that so many of the current ones fail so badly. I think some of the makers of these films need to go back and watch some of the earlier ones and realize that you should just try to have some cheap fun. The characters in this film are so unlikeable that you really don't care about them and this here just hurts the film even more. Even worse is that the story is so silly that it's hard to care about what's going on and things don't get any better after the opening minutes. The CGI creature looks incredibly bad but this here is to be expected. The gore effects are also mostly CGI and one really wonders if the budget couldn't have been raised a few bucks to where they could have at least bought some fake blood to squirt around instead of having to use CGI. Both Balfour and Hasperger are decent in their parts but neither are given much to work with. What keeps this film moving is Corman who actually gets a pretty good role here. He appears in a good chunk of the picture and while he's not the greatest actor in the world he's at least watchable and it's good to see him in front of the camera again.

Global warming causes ice shelf to calve releasing prehistoric beasty into the modern world. So right off the bat SyFy Channel doesn't want to be accused of originality so they use a pretty overused monster trope, and then they decided that they don't want to accused of being entertaining either so they gave us a film that is 90 minutes of sheer boredom as the dinoshark swims and kills with not an ounce of self awareness or winking at the camera that a film of this genre kind of relies on to be successful. When your a TV movie and can't have actual gore or gratuitous nudity you have to make up for it with a fun and clever script, this film didn't even bother with a script at all. Eric Balfour (Skyline) has got to be the most boring of leads imaginable, and he heads a cast of mostly overdubbed Mexican actors. Pathetic.

Eric Balfour's character describes seeing this horned creature attacking about, later the lead girl looks up stuff on the "internet" and finds artists renderings of a horned prehistoric shark. Strangely the dinoshark that we get in this movie does not have the horns described by Balfour or like the one in the drawings. I guess the CGI team didn't bother reading the non-existent script either.

Roger Corman should be ashamed to have his named attached to a piece of dung like this. It's not even bad/fun, it's simply boring/bad.

The title promises some good kitschy schlock fun, and the film delivers it. A prehistoric beast that once roamed primeval waters is back, and very hungry. It visits Puerto Vallarta to hunt and feast on anything that moves.

The creature is designed pretty well, and it's quite an acrobat. It lunges out of water to chomp on copters and para-sailors. It hangs ten to grab surfers, and jumps over road blocks set up by the local policia. Why it's here is not really explained, but it may have to do with not eating for 65 million years or so; this thing has one dino-appetite. Nobody is safe, and Sharky devours a few people you wouldn't expect. Walk-on characters fare worst of all; appearing just long enough to encounter you-know-who.

A tour-boat guy, a girl scientist who works a menial job, and a big-dino-fish expert are the only ones that bother to do anything about the monster. By the way, the white-coated expert on prehistoric sharks is played by none other than B-movie wizard Roger Corman himself, in a rare turn in front of the camera. And he does a good job in the role, too.

Good action, combined with some cheesy effects, makes for a good ride as our heroes try to stop the ancient creature's hunger rampage. This one is pretty fun to watch.

If you like cheesy shark movies, this will be right up your alley. Don't worry about the plot, just sit back and enjoy 90 minutes of corny shark fun. This is set in Puerto Vallarta so it has some tropical scenes and the basic girls that are cute but not very hot.

I just love how they have been able to make so many of the low level movies that aren't memorable, but are fun to laugh at for some summer fun.