Dinoshark

In an arctic region, melting glaciers cause the release of an ancient baby "Dinoshark". Three years later, the now monstrously adult beast turns up off the Alaskan coastline. It eats a diver and, apparently, develops a taste for human flesh. Migrating southward brings "Dinoshark" to tourist-rich Puerto Vallarta, Mexico which has a good food supply. Handsome young "Fin Seeker" tour boat captain Eric Balfour (as Trace McGraw) is the one who first realizes the danger and tries to stop the carnage. "Dinoshark" could disrupt the community's annual fiesta...

You would expect legendary low-budget producer Roger Corman to excel in Syfy Channel shark movies, but the expert fails to make the most of this assignment. "Dinoshark" is sloppy and substandard, even for the genre and TV movie outlet. As if to rub salt in the wound, Mr. Corman contributes a lackluster acting role (as Frank Reeves). The Corman fun is missing. Likable in the lead, Mr. Balfour is left holding the water. His attractive co-stars are led by beautiful blonde Princeton graduate and water polo captain Iva Hasperger (as Carol Brubaker).

*** Dinoshark (3/13/10) Kevin O'Neill ~ Eric Balfour, Iva Hasperger, Aaron Diaz, Roger Corman

I have made no secret about disliking a vast majority of Syfy's output, I find a lot of cheesy effects, terrible acting and forced dialogue complete with the odd bit of novelty value if in the right mood. Dinoshark is not among the worst of their efforts, as the creature is surprisingly adequate in design and the opening sequence sets the film up quite nicely. Plus the locations are quite nice, shame though about the choppy editing. However, apart from the creature the effects are really quite cheesy, the gore especially does look very fake. The film also has a predictable story, which I was expecting actually though on paper it had a somewhat daft but intriguing idea, but it is also a sluggishly paced story complete with scenes that are either useless, scenes that feel more a spoof movie than anything else with a scene reminiscent of one from Megashark vs. Giant Octopus, or completely devoid of suspense. The dialogue is forced and contrived, I agree 100% about the "food made with love" line, which in my mind is one of the most groan-worthy lines ever on film celluloid. The direction is flimsy, and the acting doesn't fare much better especially the lead actress who can't act even if her life depends on it, yes even from Roger Corman, not helped by the fact that none of the characters are compelling, likable or written well. The attack scenes are also badly staged with no build-ups whatsoever, and the music score is little more than a badly done rehash of the likes of Jaws. Overall, it is a terrible movie, but I'll be kind in that Syfy have done much worse. 2/10 Bethany Cox

A dinoshark comes out of hibernation from being frozen for millions of years, to dine on some human flesh.

I picked this one up for some cheesy, it's so bad it's fun, lets have a good time, type of film. I'm so disappointed to say that Dinoshark failed on so many levels to entertain me, to make me laugh at the horribleness of it all or even keep my attention. I have to recommend Sharktopus over this one.

Eric Balfour continues to appear in horrible films, I don't understand why. I would hope that he assumed that he could amass some cult fans out there, but this film is too much of a mess for even those people looking for bad entertainment. I had a decent time seeing Roger Corman on the screen though, he knows how to act in a film like this.

The kills are BORING. It's the same thing over and over and over again. Dinoshark swims up to someone, crappy shot of it eating someone, then fill the screen with red to disorient the viewer from the fact that we have no budget to showcase a decent death. Sharktopus was more creative. Dinoshark feels like Megashark and Sharktopus, minus all the awesomeness and fun. The creature design is decent, from what I could see of it. The only cool images this film had were of the over the head shots of the water. Seeing the shadow of it swim underwater was neat. The rest is garbage.

The continuity errors were enough to make me laugh, glasses on face in one scene, completely gone the next. Not to mention that one character has a BEARD in one scene, then nothing for the rest of the movie. It literally pops up out of nowhere. I could appreciate the lame continuity issues, had the film been more aware of this. Instead, it feels oblivious to it all.

The giant shark is able to swim in the shallowest water ever. Literally two feet away from the land, it pops up to eat a croc. What? Insert Jaws theme rip-off and lame death scenes and you have yourself a terrible film. I guess I was expecting a cheesy fun factor here, but instead I got a horribly boring effort that hopes to capitalize on the title of the film more than anything else.

Dinoshark is a miss.

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.

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.