Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Since the studio decided to vote no on press screenings there's been a shortage of reviews in advance of the release. I see why they'd do it... not like this movie is critic-bait anyway, but as someone who loves Joe Dante's original Jaws homage (written by the great and respectable John Salles, no less) and a good, cheesy tongue-in-cheek horror flick with tons of blood, gore and breastseses I'm itching to see the flick. And considering Richard Dreyfuss is pretty much playing Matt Hooper at the beginning (from wardrobe to name, I'm told) that guarantees me some enjoyment. Plus, it's Alex Aja. His Haute Tension is 95% the best horror movie of the decade. Anyway, we got a reader review that has some spoilery material and I figured I'd go ahead and run it. I'll probably be seeing the flick tonight at some theater in town and will hopefully be awake enough to run my own review afterward.
Hey Harry Been on the site for a few years now but this is the first time I'm sending you guys anything, hope you can use it. I'm a projectionist and I just screened Piranha in 3D, I haven't seen any reviews yet so I thought I'd send you a quick write-up. (MILD SPOILERS) The movie starts with an awesome cameo by Richard Dreyfuss, and right away I thought I was in for something great. I saw it for free, but by the end I couldn't recommend it to someone paying $14-$16 to see it. The movie itself is 82 minutes, and the first hour is really slow going. Pretty much all there is to hold your attention is a completely useless teenage romance subplot, a lot of boobs and a few deaths. But the deaths are heavily CGId, shaky and close-up so you can barely make out what happening. And yeah, boobs are nice to look at but it gets old fast. Plus, I'm pretty sure all of the naked women are pornstars (except Kelly Brook), so just get their names from the credits and you can look up videos that show a lot more than their tits. But at the 60 minute mark the thing kicks into high gear. The massacre in the lake (the Comic-Con footage) is pretty epic; all kinds of crazy, sadistic deaths. And they finally lay off the CGI and start using practical in-camera effects, and it gets pretty gruesome. Huge gaping wounds, people ripped in half, limbs partially chewed apart, propellers chopping people up, a scalping, a great head squashing. Really fun, really really gory stuff. Then, just as it's got your heart racing and it's really starting to get you involved...roll credits. BLUE BALLS. It doesn't end so much as it just stops. It defenitely feels like they cut the last 20 minutes of the script off because they didn't have the budget or they had a runtime constriction. But either way they neglected to write an ending. After seeing this movie I'm still of the opinion that 3D is unecessary and takes more away from a film than it adds. But unlike "Clash of the Titans" or "The Last Airbender," the film is bright and the 3D effects are rendered well enough. None of the actors really make an impression because their characters are completely underwritten (it was nice to see Christopher Lloyd for a few seconds), but there was one exception. I thought Adam Scott was great. I love how he goes from being the pussy, nerdy scientist who can't believe Elisabeth Shue is crazy enough to go back out on the lake...to badass action hero saving teens on a jet-ski while pumping & firing a shotgun with one hand in about 5 seconds. The whole time he's reacting to every situation like he's in the audience watching this movie; he's really self-deprecating and has a lot of fun with the role. So if you still want to see it, my advice would be to watch the first 5 minutes for the awesome Richard Dreyfuss cameo. Then leave the theater, go to your car and download a couple porn videos on your iPhone...and come back 55 minutes later to watch the last 20. If you use this call me J-Dawg. "The thing about the J-Dawg...is that you can't tame the J-Dawg"
