Sharknado Review

Warning (?): Spoilers for Sharknado abound here.  Suffice to say spoiler free, if you want a perfect movie for good bad movie night, look no further.

Most movies that fall into the “so bad it’s good” category tend to be ones made by people who think they’re making masterpieces, but completely fail to deliver on every level; the filmography of Ed Wood or The Room for examples.  Then you get Sharknado, the latest in Syfy’s original movies, a film that blew up Twitter with its ridiculous title as the premise.  A movie that’s well aware it is no budget schlock, but embraces what it is and takes it to its extreme.  The film is poorly directed, edited, acted and written, with special effects that are better suited for a Nintendo 64 game than a movie.  And, like many good bad movie fans, I loved every awful, stupid minute of it.

To explain the plot reminds me of the “disclaimer” before Huck Finn, but I’ll make an attempt anyway: surfer Fin—yeah, it’s that movie—tries to make his way to his wife and daughter and later on son amidst a massive storm that deposits sharks throughout Los Angeles via the eponymous sharknado.  Tagging along are his best friend, a waitress that’s feels like is supposed to be Fin’s love interest until they decide to make her Fin’s son’s love interest & John Heard, who I’m pretty sure is actually drunk as his character is, wondering how he wound up in a movie with Tara Reid and Ian Ziering.  Throughout the film he has this bizarre compulsion to stop what he’s doing and save random strangers, including one scene where he must’ve spent several hours lifting one by one an entire busload of kids driven by Cousin Oliver from the Brady Bunch.  That’s about as much character development as you’re going to get, and the plot doesn’t fare much better.

This is a film that not only completely disregards the rules of gravity and physics, but also how humans, the world, weather and movies generally function.  Here’s just a few examples of ridiculous things that happen in this film:

·         A shark attack early on in the film is juxtaposed with stock footage of people at a day at the beach hanging out like nothing’s wrong. 

·         They didn’t bother putting in background in the scenes where the characters are driving or in a helicopter, so everything outside the vehicles is white.

·         Sharks pounce on people like cougars and devour them in seconds or in one case, swallows a few whole without biting them at all.

·         A house, on a hill no less, floods and by doing so collapses.

·         A car randomly explodes for no reason. 

·         This whole thing is blamed on global warming (needless to say scientific accuracy isn’t a concern). 

·         The pointless prologue about fisherman looking to get in the business of shark fin soup with a buyer who just happens to be there.   

·         An airplane tarmac has a home supply store just next door to the hangar. 

·         A Ferris wheel rolls through a city and smashes into a large office building, destroying the building. 

It’s tempting to write this review entirely in italics and in exclamation points because of its relentless insanity.

Oh, it gets crazier.  Rather than, say bunker down in a shelter to avoid the tornadoes filled with sharks, Fin and his crew decide to fight the sharks using shotguns and handguns.  This movie had to have been a zombie tornado initially, but they just search and replaced zombie with shark right?  Zombie tornado must be in the pipeline.  Somehow they are able to kill sharks with handguns from the ground, but it doesn’t stop there.  Even after all of that, Fin decides he and his family need to fight the tornados using homemade bombs.  They even use chainsaws that slice through these sharks like a hot knife through butter, one doing so from the inside.

Movies that are “so bad it’s good” generally are made by people who lack the self-awareness that they’re making a bad movie.  However, there are a few that are “so bad it’s good” because they are one hundred percent committed to making the choices good filmmakers won’t.  As much as we want to see films that get things right, sometimes we want to see a film get everything completely, hilariously wrong, and that can be almost as satisfying.

Actual grade: F

So bad it’s good grade: A

Much Ado About Nothing Review

It can be easy to fall in love with the work of Joss Whedon, or at least admire his work ethic.  While it seems so many marketable names can succumb to making paycheck movies once they’ve gotten big, Whedon’s still interested in making stories about characters.  For his follow up to The Avengers, the 200 million dollar blockbuster that broke a billion dollars worldwide, he staged a secret low budget, black and white adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, shot at his home in California and starring mostly people he’s worked with in the past.  The result is a little wobbly, but a welcome and charming side project.

The film sticks to the original play and language, while updating the setting into contemporary times (though an iPod is used, modern technology is kept to a minimum).  Once it started, I immediately wished I’d read the play beforehand, but that’s more on me.  I’ll surely check it out on home video with the subtitles on.  Regardless of my difficulties fully getting in to it (mostly my fault), you can follow along to any good Shakespearean adaptation if you can understand half of what they’re saying and by following the actor’s cues  as you can here.

Shakespearean text is often the toughest material to deliver without sounding like it’s being read for English class, but this cast largely pulls it off.  Alexis Denisof is fun as the arrogant Benedick and Nathan Fillion continues his streak of being awesome as Dogberry, but it is Amy Acker who is the true standout of this cast.  Acker shines as Beatrice, a head strong, independently minded woman that fits well within the Whedon canon.  Of the actors she handles Shakespeare’s words the best and brings a real emotional depth to them.  Not to mention her chemistry with Denisof is undeniably strong.

Though the film has all the staples of a Shakespearean comedy; the large ensemble of characters, said characters plotting against each other, mistaken identities and characters falling in and out of love, it owes a lot to the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s.  Besides the black and white photography, there is some great physical comedy here, like when Denisof poses/exercises Ron Burgundy style for Acker, a certain pratfall involving a stairway and two scenes of characters eavesdropping, fully utilizing Whedon’s home as a locale.

There is this great sense of “What the hell, let’s put on a show”, that makes this film endearing.  They lack the huge budget and certain production values, but you can tell the actors were having fun.  Of course, this film could easily fall into the vanity project filmmakers are prone to making once they become successful, but this is pretty far from flying his friends to an exotic location with a half-baked script in an attempt to pass off his vacation as a movie.  Like Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog, Whedon’s low budget, do-it-yourself fare is a refreshing alternative to certain bloated, excessive films some of his peers are making.

Grade: B

In Memory of My Dad

A little over a week and a half ago, my dad passed away at age 60.  Since then it’s been strange: I’m beginning the long process of realizing he’s not here anymore and dealing with how to go back to my regular life.  I’m also trying to figure out what to say about him.  Of course my dad taught me a lot about life and how to be a good person.  However, I think the thing I got the most out of from my dad was his ability to try to experience as much culture as he could.

My dad was the kind of person who could talk to anyone, a trait I always wished I had.  This lead to his three decade long career in radio, from working on air as a newsman (I certainly inherited his deep voice) to selling advertising over the radio.  It was work that took him from Connecticut to New Hampshire to Boston and back to New Hampshire again.  He saw a great many changes over the years as the idea of a rock station saw the advent of FM radio to the rise of corporate ownership to the new frontier of online radio, he saw it all and always looked for what was new and interesting.

One of the things I always loved about my dad was his ability to embrace new things.  When I was a teenager, he’d borrow my Beck and Radiohead CDs for his car.  After watching the Fatboy Slim video “Weapon of Choice”, he gave me money to buy the album because he wanted to hear it.  Sure there were times when he might’ve played along because that’s what parents do, but my dad definitely found plenty to enjoy in music outside of what he listened to while growing up.  It lead me to be open to his suggestions as well, giving his old favorites a chance when he finally got them in CD format.

Thanks in part to his work in radio I spent a good chunk of my teen years going to concerts.  One high school friend, while offering his condolences, reminded me of one such show where he got us a limo to take us to a show.  It culminated when we went to the infamous Woodstock 99 festival.  Although it’s impossible to think of that event without thinking of the sad aftermath, that weekend is one of my most cherished memories of my dad, from laughing at the stoners or beating the heat in the shadow of the rising platform MuchMusic used for their dispatches or seeing Elvis Costello, one of his favorites (he owned a poster, which has to be at least five feet by seven feet, for at least 20 years), do a low key set Sunday afternoon.

In his later years he’d continue to explore, going to art shows, concerts and films, often at the nearby Yale campus, where he was a student in the early 70s.  Though we’d separated geographically, we kept in touch thanks to a weekly phone call I’d make every Sunday or through instant messages, texts and even some Skype video chats.  Since I’d found my own tastes, I’d be the one to recommend stuff back to him.

His tastes certainly influenced mine, from exposing me to Monty Python and science fiction (both good and the hilariously bad), to taking me to see Nights of Cabiria or renting Dr. Strangelove for me when I was in high school.  While I may have been too young to grasp fully what Fellini was going for in that late neorealist gem, seeing it early and with plenty of other films he loved set the stage for me being up for anything.  My Netflix DVD queue has never dipped below 485 since starting it, with everything from bizarre arthouse fare to big blockbusters, and I have to thank my dad for giving me that insatiable thirst for the diverse world of popular art.

Of course I’m still coming to terms with what happened and what I’ve lost: my dad, but also my guide.  He was my first template into how to interact with the world and he left me, as well as my sister and anyone who knew him, with a great philosophy of trying to go into life ready to experience the multitude of things even the most humdrum of existences can afford.  In a way, it also reminds me of the passing of Roger Ebert, one of my pop culture heroes.  He spent his life opening up the world of movies to a mass audience, and although it is certainly sad that he is gone, his legacy in those whose lives he touched is immeasurable and helped make them better, more thoughtful human beings.  My dad’s influence is pretty clear on me: besides how I look, my voice and other genetic things, he raised me to be a student of life, and my life is richer for it.

Rest in Peace Dad.

This Is the End Review

I’ve really been looking forward to a good Hollywood comedy, but unfortunately most of the post-Bridesmaids fare hasn’t worked for me.  To prove my point: my two favorite “comedies” from last year were The Avengers and Django Unchained.  Unfortunately the Apatow boom of the mid-00s has waned as most comedy movements do and I felt a little of that going in to This Is the End, the latest from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who both also directed.  Although the buzz was great, I couldn’t help but feel a little like I would’ve been more excited for this if it came out in 2008.  A high concept film with the cast playing versions of themselves?  Not to mention it’s another apocalypse film (there’s still one more to go this summer).  This could’ve been a disaster, but luckily I was dead wrong.  This Is the End is a blast, a strong contender for funniest movie of the year.

This film stars Rogen and Jay Baruchel as two friends who’ve drifted apart.  Rogen’s more successful, and Baruchel finds the Hollywood scene and Rogen’s new friends annoying.  Despite Baruchel’s reservations, Rogen drags him to a party at James Franco’s house when The Rapture and subsequent apocalypse happen, forcing the handful of survivors to hole up in Franco’s fortress of a mansion.  Despite the larger than life stakes outside—which claim the bulk of the celebrity cameos in the first act—it’s a relatively small film, taking place mostly within that set.

With most of the cast playing themselves, it can easily devolve into being too self-indulgent, but the film is so funny that never gets to that point.  The cast is in fine form from Jonah Hill behaving like South Park’s Cartman when he’s sucking up to authority figures to Michael Cera’s drunken creep to Danny McBride, basically playing Kenny Powers and annoying the other survivors.  Although the film goes a little longer than I like for comedies, I could’ve seen at least five more minutes of the cameos at the party in the beginning (I expect there will be a lot of deleted scenes when it comes out on home video).

Even if you don’t get the references (though people who get them will enjoy it more), the film still works on a solid structure.  It’s not relying solely on improvisation, something that sinks so many comedies.  The film is basically about a friendship in turmoil as one friend gets successful and makes a new group of friends that clash with the first friend.  There’s also stuff about selling out and making fun of over pampered celebrities.  It also has a strong heart at its center with a good message of living well.  It’s almost like Hollywood taking a crack at a movie usually made by Christians for Christians.

Following some of the casts questionable career choices, you get a feeling this film is a back to basics move and it works.  This film is consistently funny and gets right what a lot of the stars’ recent comedies have gotten wrong.  There is some less than impressive CG, but it’s easy to forgive given the budget and the feel that this film was a labor of love.  It is the refreshing jolt of life mainstream comedy films so desperately needed.

Grade: B+