Roboshark

It is stupidly funny, but that does not mean it is any good. One learns new things, like submarines have the words United States Navy in large block letters painted on the hull. When soldiers march on, the all say hut, hut. Fire chiefs in Seattle do not wear white helmets like fire chiefs elsewhere. The main substory is between Trish and Veronica, two TV reporters from Channel 55. Trish is a weather person who appears in costume, and had one particularly terrible 'scoop' news report that banished her to third rate stories. Veronica is a blond prima donna who hogs the limelight. The acting is third rate, the shark is comical and done in very poor CGI. It simply is a very sloppy movie with very poor special effects.

Sorry to say but it's just not worth your time! Bad acting, I thought I was looking at a comedy!

The good news is that of the SyFy shark movies, Roboshark is one of the better ones, and among the more tolerable SyFy outings. The not so good news is that that doesn't stop Roboshark from not being particularly good or great.

Roboshark is one of SyFy's least amateurish-looking movies, with nice scenery, slicker-than-usual photography and a design for the Roboshark that has some menace and is one of SyFy's cooler- and- less-cheap- looking. The Roboshark is also well-utilised and unlike a lot of SyFy creatures has a personality, a threatening one rather than being too goofy that it brings unintentional humour. The movie clearly knows what it's trying to be and which audience it's aiming for, and in the process doesn't try to do too much while not playing it too safe either, and contains some clever inside jokes and hilarious one-liners. There are also fun performances from Laura Dale and particularly Nigel Barber, the only ones in the cast who show that they can still have fun without overacting, as well as some spirited and confident direction.

On the other hand, the rest of the cast wildly overact and in the case of the extras and Matt Rippy to an embarrassing degree, something that really hurts the tension. The characters are barely developed and some are annoying, which makes them difficult to root for, the movie drags a little in the exposition moments and some of the more dramatic parts veer on turgid and ham-fisted. The story is well-intentioned and clearly knows what its aim and audience is, but the silliness gets very over-the-top sometimes that it gets ridiculous (like with the bacon) which gets in the way of generating suspense or tension, and it gets tiring towards the end. Aside from a catchy opening, the movie is generically scored too with not an awful lot standing out as memorable, and while the opening is fun and quite scary the climax of the movie is predictable and rushed..

All in all, not great but one of the better and more tolerable SyFy shark movies. A decent guilty pleasure-type movie if you will. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Right away I knew that when you cast, Nigel Barber (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!) into any movie, you are shooting for another campy movie success. What SyFy does lately is push out this camp more than ever. What SyFy failed to remember is what really made "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978)" successful... Elvia (Cassandra Peterson) who hosted the movie on her late night TV show back in the day.

No one is going to sit and yuck it up at those movies without some late night horror host rifting on it. We watched the campy movies because of Elvira's "Movie Macabre", Joel Hodgson's "Mystery Science Theater 3000", Count Gore de Vol, or Karlos Borloff. This made the campy horror sci-fi movie watchable.

SyFy needs STOP cranking out the camp. They use to have a lot better programming on in the late 1990s. Remember series like Farscape, The Invisible Man, Battlestar Galactica, Good vs. Evil, and Eureka? Their movies were also about space and fantasy. Every now and then SyFy network CEO comes along with a new bright idea and we get only the one flavor. The network has these bad phases. Let's do nothing but ghost busting reality TV! Oh great idea...

This movie is the product of a company who thinks, if one campy shark movie is deemed a success, more will be a gold rush.

An absolute load of rubbish. My son's daycare has better actors.