This cheesy and deliberately stupid franchise puts a smile on my face, so right there that means a 5-star baseline. Sure, Tara Reid (she of the famous nip slip) is terrible here; she looks bad (awful hair and costumes) and her "acting" doesn't help. It's Ian Zierling that holds things together; he plays his part straight and that's key.
Cassandra Scerbo is always fun to watch (and easy on the eyes); at least she got to wear some decent outfits. There are many cameos as one would expect; they fit with the parody (and self-parody) flavor.
The films are getting increasingly ridiculous, but realistically, what choice do they have? OF COURSE the novelty is wearing off!
Regarding the detractors; no one forced them to watch. The folks who like these films might just be sick of pretentious films (and actors).
The Sharknado films gleefully reference and/or steal from other films, but at least they do it openly. So there.
I'm giving this film a one-star penalty for being non-memorable. It made me smile, but just a few hours later, I don't recall why (in any detail). That's a problem. So that's only four (4) stars total.
DRIFTING OFF-TOPIC (for most, not all)
{Welcome to my Under the Silver Lake (UTSL) distributed essay. This is Part 3. Part 2 was attached to my (4-star) review of The Phantom.}
Under the Silver Lake (2018) is a strange film with an unsolved (audience) puzzle that references dozens of other films, often in very subtle ways. Sharknado V has many tie-ins.
One blatant reference is the Egyptian-style eye above the UTSL bunker-tomb -- it's right out of Sharknado 5. You can see the shark-gills in UTSL, but they're slightly smudged so you won't notice unless you look. The eye itself is a mirror image but otherwise identical.
Another blatant reference is Sam's pool, which is shaped like a shark's dorsal fin (from the camera angle used). Also, Comic-Man has a set of shark jawbones.
In UTSL, the afterlife cultists spend 6 months underground. Well, Ian Ziering, the star of the Sharknado movies, was in Six Months Later (2005, short).
For sake of brevity, I'll just tell you that this seems to lead to John Heard (George the barstool guy in Sharknado). His relevance is arguably supported by his role in The Nurse (2014); this could explain why Riki Lindhome wore a nurse's outfit in one scene.
In any case, John Heard was in O (2001). Take a look at the movie poster -- see the guy holding up the giant yellow letter "O"? This is referenced by the UTSL scene where the girls in the white VW rabbit get out to attend a rooftop pool party. One of them briefly holds a yellow doughnut-shaped pool float over her head. There's another pointer to this moment -- see my (9-star) review of LOTR -- The Two Towers (rw9878533).
