Mega Piranha

Well, folks...Syfy has done it again. Another sub-B movie churned out in the same tier as Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. I normally get a laugh out of this sort of flick; the purple prose script with cheesy delivery, the absurd plots with more holes than a screen door and the shockingly bad cg are all fodder for mocking and jeering with friends. Still, these movies can only achieve the rank of risibly bad classics if the writers, actors and directors are completely oblivious to just how terrible a film they've unleashed upon the world. Syfy originals seem to exist for the sake of being entertainingly awful, and it is that bent-on-wrecking-this-train mentality that makes this and many other movies lame.

The movie follows the same formula that plagues the made for TV nature-horror scene. Follow these steps and you too can be a Scifi writer! Take some normal animals that aren't much of a threat and make them huge/super strong/intelligent (pick any super-animal attribute. It really doesn't matter). Science creates then tries to control the bastard chimeras, but of course scientists are nerds, so they should fail. This is usually because the military/some evil corporation ruins everything with snafu after snafu. This step is important because it serves as a diatribe to meddling scientists, overconfident military leaders and corporate America. Your script now has depth and you can tote your worth as a writer that cares about the issues. Insert the big, bad protagonist. He should be able to punch and kick his way through hordes of monsters that have ripped through countless crewman number 6s and still look damn good doing it. You can also add a strong independent and flawlessly attractive girl to the script. The more independent you make her, the more substance the script has. It is important to acknowledge that women are every bit as amazing your beefcake hero and your creation will be so revolutionary that even a feminist won't scoff at it(you'll also have a slightly better chance of scoring with the lead lady). You now have the tools to start your own script. I don't want to flood the market with great writers, so you'll have to figure out the end for yourself. Use a lot of fake blood, clean up obvious plot holes with single lines like, "Yeah, well things change," and insert as many bikini-clad women as your budget will allow and I'm sure everything will be fine.

This movie works on many of the same levels, and it is sure to be one of the most critically acclaimed thrillers of this or any year. Just remember: regardless of whether a piranha is doubling in size every 2 days or 36 hours, it is growing exponentially.

I had too much fun laughing at this to vote it lower than a 5.

Piranhas are already pretty fearsome creatures. So naturally, some scientists genetically mutate them. Things go wrong; the creatures escape into a Venezuelan river, and start to "grow exponentially." So a big guy on steroids named Fitch is sent to aid Venezuelan soldiers to fight the menace. They look like Castro impersonators, and end up chasing him around, for whatever reason.

When the Sec. of State looks like a Brady and is named Grady, you know the "Asylum" movie makers are just "winking at the audience." The action-film meets sci-fi motif is played with over-the-top gusto: look for piranha jumping high into the air and slamming their victims down like a sledgehammer. I didn't know they could do that. Even mutated ones. Steroid Fitch kick-boxes an entire school of piranha senseless in a great Jackie Chan moment. The super-sized creatures crash themselves into Key West hotels. Battleships get turned into Fish Filet sandwiches. The TV news reporter doing play-by-play of a piranha attack, the bit about tail fins, Col. Valdez inexplicably showing up in Florida; hilarious.

Most of the time it makes absolutely no sense what's going on, with absurd scientific plot holes everywhere. There's no intent for this to be taken seriously; and taken at face value it's classic B movie silliness.

I was looking to a wonderful day watching the SyFy channel. DinoCroc and other silly, stupid movies. But, this movie was the worse. Bad acting, bad writing, bad cinematography, bad special effects....bad, bad, bad. I just can't accept a leading actor that makes Arnold seem like a linguist, piranhas the size of 737s (albeit, with slightly shorter flight range), and Greg Brady as a secretary of...? Of what? I love these movies, but not this one. I can't believe in this day and age that the special effects (especially the huge fish flying and swimming out of the water) could be sooooo bad. My GF said said "if you didn't like it it, it must have been the worse". It was. It is.

Devouring everything in its path with ruthless efficiency, wiggling a bloated swollen tail to propel itself from one disaster scene to the next, can anything stop the menace of the Fat Chick Who Ate Tiffany? We could consider the other merits of the movie, but it has none. None at all. It's a SyFy quota quickie, with the usual collection of embarrassingly awful CGI, an utterly nonsensical script made from scraps of coffee stained paper found in community film college trash cans, and a cast harvested from the rejects of daytime soap extra auditions.

So instead let's just cut to the chase and talk about the Name in this disaster of a disaster movie: Tiffany.

God damn, SyFy has made some bizarre choices in female leads. The criteria is simple enough: take some washed up has-been like Traci Lords or a desperate wannabe like Felicia Day who will work for cab fare and catering, shove them in front of a camcorder and film whatever they feel like shrieking. But at least with the like of Lords or Day, you probably kinda woulda, maybe. But Tiffany looks like she passed on the cab fare and just ate the catering. And everyone else's. And the caterers.

Granted, you can't complain about the quantity of T&A on screen, but the quality leaves a lot to be desired. She's about 2 supersized lunches away from being comedy fatso material, only without the laughs.

To be fair, if you're into chubby chasing, Tiffany has quite a soft milfy look to her pudgy face, and if SyFy had squeezed her into a corset and filmed her carefully, they might have made something watchable. But making her wobble and waddle from one shoddy location to the next must surely count as cruelty to the disadvantaged.

Everyone loves a bad monster movie, right? There is a great charm in the so-bad-it-is-good film, and for a while Mega Piranha delivers the goods. Alas, but then the unremitting awfulness wears you down due to endless repetition of scenes and CGI that is so bad that it can't be unintended (I hope). Add the unlikely return of a really rubbish villain (flying a helicopter that seems to be able to circumnavigate the whole world), and a truly bizarre finale that suggests that everyone just got bored and pulled the plug, and you just have ultimate tedium (well, for me, at least). Still, it is not everyday that you get to see Tiffany playing a hydro-biologist, and I'm hoping to see Britney Spears as a Navy Seal in 'Mega Shrimp' and Ke$ha as the US President in 'Monster Manatee' vs. Giant Gecko' some time soon.