Alerte aux requins

Casper Van Dien breaks a new record in looking shabby in this movie, although he is supposed to be a marine biologist. If you can buy that, you will probably be able to handle the rest of the movie as well. "Shark Attack" tells the story of Van Dien going to South Africa (where just about everyone seem to be a hustler), to look for his missing friend. He finds out that his friend became shark food, and tries to find out why the sharks have started to behave so aggressively in this particular area. He gets help by another expert, Corinne, who loves to run around in her bikini while trying to solve the case.

If you are looking for really bad acting, check out "Shark Attack". You won´t believe your eyes. The effects are awfully lousy, unless you find rubber sharks convincing. The script contained so many old cliches that I lost count of them, and that is not too good. Right from the start it is quite obvious who is good and who is evil.

These kind of films can be so bad that they become entertaining, but "Shark Attack" is not fun at all. Man, I´d rather watch an episode of "Baywatch" than this kind of crap. Why somebody felt it was necessary to make a sequel to "Shark Attack" I have no idea.

* out of * * * * *

Unlike most opinion I think the sharks are realistic - the reason being the majority are seen as stock footage that so obiviously has no relation to the actors in terms of the scene. This film manages to have shark attacks with no tension or excitment - Casper Van Dien is constantly throwing himself into the waterwith a knife or something to take on the sharks - and never even looks worried. Jenny McShane runs round in little briefs etc - it's obivious why she is included in the cast. This is so lame that it provides no enterainment at all. Shark attacks bring out a basic fear in all of us - that this film manages to bring NONE of that to the screen is really bad.

Shark Attack (1999)

** (out of 4)

A marine biologist played by Casper Van Dien (yeah, I know) goes to Port Amanzi Africa after his best friend is mysteriously eaten by a shark. It turns out that shark attacks are up all over the region so Mr. Van Dien must find out the cause and it turns out that a greedy real estate owner (Ernie Hudson) is having sharks eat people so that he can buy up all their land. Sounds plausible, right? If you walk into this movie and are willing to turn your brain off then you might get some mild entertainment out of it but if you're one who needs to take everything serious then it's best to stay away from this thing. This is certainly a bad movie and it's the cheese factor that gives it some unintentional laughs and a lot of them come from Van Dien's performance. He's certainly not very believable in the role. You know how in a great performance the actor can make you believe everything they're saying? Well, in this film it was very hard to believe that Van Dien knew anything that was coming out of his mouth and the viewer can tell this. That's part of the reason for the laughs but another is because his character comes off like some sort of ancient gladiator. There are a couple scenes in the film where people are getting attacked by sharks and the brave Van Dien just jumps into the water, swims over to the shark and takes care of the situation. I'm no shark expert but I've seen Shark Week on Discovery enough to know that you don't go messing with a shark during a feeding frenzy. The majority of the shark scenes are obviously just stock footage taken from real sharks. It's obvious because each time we see the "main" shark it's different in size than the previous time we saw it. The attack scenes are also rather cheap.

Ok, its a low budget movie, but hey, it has a plot, it has actual moving boats, different locations and actors that can moderately act unlike some of the shark movies out there like Jurassic Shark. Don't expect anything too major and you won't be disappointed.....

I love Shark Movies ... the more the better.....

....as my DVD player stopped playing it after about an hour. I am in no doubt however it was doing me a favour, saving me before my brain had totally rotted. Luckily I did get to see the car chase, which contains quite possibly the worst editing I have ever seen in my life (the police are driving and old Alfa Romeo 33, which suddenly changes to a mark 1 Ford Sierra, then back to an Alfa, then crashes as a Sierra! Do these people even watch the film when they've finished making it? The cars don't even look remotely similar!)

But I digress. As you've probably worked out by now I hate this film. Even if it has got Ernie Hudson in it (who will always be a God in my eyes for appearing in Ghostbusters.) Most of the movie has nothing to do with sharks, just corrupt cops. I guess they'd run out of money by this point so you get the good old 'z-list actor throwing themselves around in the water whilst someone lets off red food dye' trick. Unless your life depends on it, do not watch this film. And even then only do if you've got a lot to live for.....