Piranha 2

If you have seen any one of the Piranha movies going all the way back to 1978 then what is shown here is more of the same. By casting David Hasselhoff as himself they showed they really weren't even trying with this one.

The only awards the female lead Danielle Panabaker might win for her performance here is an Amber Tamblyn lookalike contest.

Set in the water park equivalent of a strip club with profoundly unlikeable and spectacularly dumb characters the essential hook here is to show naked people (Mostly women) and gore which is not something everyone wants to see together or even separately.

The gross-out factor gets to be pretty intense and for the second one of these movies in a row male genital mutilation is served up for audience approval and that isn't even the most disgusting thing shown.

What we see readily earns this flick its R rating within 10 minutes. There is political incorrectness and then there is Girls Gone Wild out-takes intercut with cheap indie horror. The piranhas look like claymation when you see them up close. You'd expect more from a production with a estimated $20 million budget.

Shot in Wilmington. North Cackalacky is rapidly becoming Hollywood Southeast.

That was shocking, all those that couldn't get out the pool well... this was meant to be a piranha film but where were they at? There was no logic to this film. Don't put yourself through the pain of watching this film.

This was more enjoyable than I thought. The acting was not as bad as some of the reviewers say, and for a film that doesn't take itself seriously, neither should you. I actually didn't mind the movie being short, after all it was always hard to stretch the storyline more than an hour.

The whole movie was more like a spoof, and somehow I felt Christopher Lloyd, Ving Rhames and of course The Hoff all added to the fun. The Hoff in particular was great. His role really suited him. He also had a bit more screen time than I would've thought.

I didn't see this in 3D, and I'm not sure if that would've changed my rating. There was a fair bit of gratuitous nudity, but I suppose the gratuitous gore balances that out.

So if you find gratuitous blood, body parts and boobs (and screaming) hilarious, this movie is worth a look over a beer and popcorn. And if you don't like it, it will be over before you know it.

The aquatic penis munching and poor character choices continue in Piranha 3DD, the even goofier follow-up to Alexandre Aja's surprisingly entertaining 2010 remake, the former of which has just been made available on DVD and Blu-ray. Although containing plenty of both intentional and unintentional laughs, "3DD" often mistakes simple-minded schlock cinema for parody and balls-out nonsense for organic fun. The Weinstein Company/Dimension Films should strongly consider packing this disc with a six pack of beer combo offer.

It's really no surprise that an influx of gratuitous nudity, celebrity cameos (as game and often ironically funny as they often are) and heaps of sheer camp can do little to raise Piranha 3DD to the level of its predecessor. It's even less mysterious as to how populating this film with jerks, ditsy bitches and pure morons (who are seemingly all bipolar judging by their mood, rationalizing and motivations) fail to make for a compelling B-movie.

Of course we expect these human-shaped hunks of piranha fodder to make poor decisions for the sake of crimson water, but when it seems like the writers are intentionally trying to craft most of these individuals with the IQ of water-logged bait worms, it comes off more as insulting.

A year has passed since the massacre at Lake Victoria, and following an eradication campaign that led to the complete and utter contamination of the water, the town's tourist industry has been likewise extinguished. But to paraphrase Dr. Malcolm from Jurassic Park, "life finds a way" and a newly evolved school of prehistoric nasties has managed to elope to another nearby lake, which unlucky for its inhabitants, supplies the local water park called "The Big Wet." Oh and in case you were even going to ask, these piranha have mutated to thrive in chlorinated water or something, so the attack may, in fact, commence without delay.

Of the things to enjoy in Piranha 3DD, it's bar none the extended cameos from Ving Rhames (complete with a shotgun leg) and a booze-swilling, out-of-shape David Hasselhoff whose self-lampooning is the only effective instance of parody to be found in this sequel. His reluctant "celebrity appearance" at the opening of "The Big Wet" amounts to nearly all of the films involuntary chuckles and his bond with a young boy (which forms because he is the only one who doesn't recognize him as the star from Baywatch) is close to the stuff of comedy gold.

Aside from those fleeting moments of inspiration, Piranha 3DD is missed opportunity after miscalculated set-piece. I mean, if you've managed to devise a scenario where a fish has managed to enter (and live in) a woman's vagina and then manage to overlook the chance to make an "eating out" joke, the filmmakers have failed us all. As far as high camp is concerned, you could certainly find more blasé fare, though that doesn't excuse this film from being an unnecessary sequel that seems to think its audience consists of horny preteens who have never seen a proper parody rather than horror buffs looking for a faithful and lovingly crafted follow-up to Piranha 3D.

Promising more of what Piranha brought you, this delivers less. A lot less. Less humor, less gore, less tension, less nudity, less edginess. Overall, it's just like one of those rip-off movies that comes out for rental right before a major movie comes out on disc. Maybe not a good example, but when Tom Cruise's War of the Worlds was due to be released, you saw knockoffs like "War Between Worlds". Those movies are drudgery to get through. It's cheap to have actors recite lines for 85 of the 90 minutes of a movie, and build a plot based upon that; but that's a different genre. When it's done and marketed as a comedy or horror, then that's a cheap rip-off. Dialog is cheap. Good, funny dialog (good writers and actors), and SFX are not cheap.

Just like a knockoff, this movie tries to be funny and fails. It tries to make you care (big mistake for comedy-horror), and really falls flat on it's face with bits of drama that are tedious to get through. Special FX are blown away by Sci-fi channel direct to disc releases. The original's SFX were not state-of-the-art all the time (most scenes were though, especially where there's gore), this one the SFX are not even TV-show decent. This would have been forgivable if the movie wasn't so boring in between those few shots. Overall, this is a boring, PG-13 movie that fails in every genre. It's not even so bad that it's funny (I watch some very low-grade B-Movies too). It's better than Thankskilling, but at least TK hit it's intended low mark of humor and quality. I'd put this movie in the same league as Black Swarm or Blood Monkey.

The only reason someone would see this is because of the titular link to the fantastically better movie, or because there's bodacious boobies on the box. Renting this and expecting either of these components to be there even in high dilution will surely disappoint you. If you can catch it for free via streaming when you need a nap, well then it would be good for that.