Hai-Alarm auf Mallorca

When a grieving widow (Moeller) discovers that a prehistoric shark – Megalodon – is responsible for the death of a swimmer, he suspects it might also be the same shark that killed his wife and two other divers several years earlier. Convincing newly appointed micro-biologist (Stinshoff) proves relatively easy, but she's oblivious to the grand scheme that has created the giant shark from living DNA recovered from a frozen specimen found in the Antarctic. Of all places to base a cutting edge cancer research facility, no doubt the idyllic Mediterranean tax haven of Mallorca would be the most sensible. At least that's what the makers of this film would have the audience believe.

The over-used CGI shark is typically unrealistic and so out-of-proportion and scale that it scarcely conjures any excitement or thrills. Even the shark swarm in the first scene is disappointing, once again courtesy of the CGI effects that give every attack a video-game quality. This German production's English dubbing is some of the worst (and unintentionally hilarious) you'll come across – the sight of big Ralf running down the beach shouting "Shugalum, shugalum" (that's meant to be "shark alarm, shark alarm" in Bavarian accent) a dozen times will have you in stitches. At least the producers had the foresight to anticipate the drudgery to which this would ultimately amount, and incorporated some quirky humour to lighten up the tone. There's a number of genuine laughs (as opposed to the unintentional ones) throughout, one in particular paying homage to "The Terminator" which works well. The obese BBQ chef and his bevy of scantily clad accoutrements who lends Ralf a luxury car or two is also a comic highlight.

But despite the eclectic editing, sometimes witty dialogue, postcards of Mallorca and stylish stunt-work (some great car maneuvers and helicopter acrobatics), there's little else to recommend this movie, which borrows heavily from several others of the ilk ("Deep Blue Sea" in particular), but achieves much less. Hanselmann's bikini-clad villainy is perhaps the most worthwhile aspect in this whole travesty; that or Ralf's physique, depending on your persuasion. Either way, it's not enough to entertain a second time.

Stumbling upon the 2004 German shark-themed movie titled "Hai-Alarm auf Mallorca" (aka "Shark Attack in the Mediterranean"), by random luck here in 2023, of course I opted to sit down and watch it. Sure, I wasn't harboring any expectations to the movie, given it being a German shark movie. But my love of the shark genre made me give the movie a fair chance.

Writers Jörg Alberts, Roland Heep, Frank Koopmann and Don Schubert put together a fair enough script. Sure, it was a very, very generic and predictable shark movie. And the storyline definitely was flawed, no doubt about it. But there are worse shark movies out there, actually.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, aside from actor Ralf Moeller. But I will say that the acting performances by the cast ensemble was actually fair enough.

The German language in the movie was not an issue, but why not keep a movie that is supposed to take place in Mallorca in English or Spanish? Would just have been a bit more authentic that way. And a boat with Germans in trouble in the waters at the Santoro Trench having the people do an emergency call in German just makes zero sense. Or a guy running around on a beach in Mallorca and yelling about a shark alert in German just made zero sense either.

My rating of "Hai-Alarm auf Mallorca", from director Jorgo Papavassiliou, lands on a three out of ten stars.

To be honest, before watching "Haialarm auf Mallorca"- "World Premier on RTL", I really had no expectations whatsoever. Now I have to say: this film is even a disgrace for the cheesiest German channel RTL (apart from RTL 2 and Super RTL). As you may have supposed the film is about a deadly dangerous super killer shark murdering people in Mallorca for no reasons. But there is hope for the terrified people of Mallorca. The great hero Ralf Moeller fights against the injustice, bravely challenging the epic monster, which isn't even identifiable nearly throughout the film. Having experienced a shark attack himself, in fact, years ago when his wife got raped, he has the opportunity to revenge now. However he has to bother with greedy scientists and corrupt police... Will justice win and the people of Mallorca have their own peaceful life back? You are going to have to see if you bother watching this masterpiece. T his horribly animated film would have been a great contender for the worst film of the year if it hadn't been German. The story is obviously rubbish and the acting wooden. Even the shark is not scary.

As a German you have to hope this movie doesn't reach a wider audience than Germany. But I'm sure it wont as there are heaps of real good films, obviously not produced by RTL. To be fair with the entire film crew, you will at least have a funny evening with a sufficient amount of alcohol and a nice company. I'm, hence, going to give this rubbish a 2.

RTL called this the TV Event of the year, nice Joke anyway.

The Story about a mutated shark is boring, the action is silly and unrealistic and most of the actors are really bad. Where else can you see dumba**es like Carsten Sprengeman, Simone Hanselmann, Ralph Möller, Katy Karrenbauer and Jeanette Biedermann in ONE film? They aren't even able to match their one-liners.

But what's really cool about that movie is the appearance by Ottfried Fischer: He's standing at a pool with maybe 20 Models in Bikinis. He grills there and talks about grilling and the GBA - German Barbecue Association. Whoever came up with this scene should get an award for it.

Because of this great scene I rate this movie 2/10.

The fact that this film presents itself like an amateur production, including an absurd story and terrible acting, would not be so bad if it would by trashy enough to give the viewer some good laughs. Instead, it is only extremely boring. Among other things, we are informed that Ralf Moeller's home cooking is rather poor, which supposedly no one had doubted in the first place. Undoubtedly, many viewers have turned on their TV set only to see Jeanette Biedermann, a German teenie idol, who adds one of her songs to this catastrophe. Others were probably fans of Moeller, but instead of playing at least some sort of hero, he fails in almost every respect, which is not exactly his fault - he simply is not an actor, but a good-looking male model. Overall: Love's lab ours lost ... completely.