Sharknado - 2013

"Sharknado" - 2013
Dir. by Anthony C. Ferrante - 1 hr. 30 min. ?

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

"Sharknado" is exactly the kind of film that requires either a billion prefaces, or just a shrug and another pull off of your bottle of beer.  Even the movie's poster says "Enough Said," an admission that there isn't much that anyone's going to say about this movie that will change your first impressions about devoting a couple of hours of your life to this concept.  So let's get past the idea that anything I, or anyone else could possibly say about this concept, and get down to the execution.

Fin (Ian Ziering) owns a beachfront bar by the Santa Monica Pier.  This is relevant because California is about to greet it's very first tornado, which has come through the ocean, driving sharks inland, where they start biting the shit out of everything they can find.  Also, the tornadoes pull sharks out of the ocean and into the twister.  When the Angelinos start acting like rain is a natural disaster, Fin decides that he's got to get his ex, April (Tara Reid), and daughter Claudia (Aubry Peeples) to safety.  April is resistant, because that how bitchy ex-wives are when their ex-husbands suggest anything.  The weather escalates, destroying Fin's bar (and other stuff), so Fin, alcoholic barfly George (John Heard), barmaid Nova (Cassie Scerbo), and his buddy Baz (Jaason Simmons) set out to rescue Fin's estranged family anyways.  Plus, sharks are being flung all over the place, and are eating people whole.

There are two things that don't matter about "Sharknado;" how well the plot holds together, and the quality of the acting.  Also, the originality of any of the characters.  There's more than enough originality in putting sharks and tornadoes together to cover all of that.  And I suppose it goes without saying that this is not, in any aspect, a good movie.  There are two things that really dragged down my enjoyment level; Tara Reid, and the overall lack of polish to the film.  I'll give this to Tara Reid, I doubt she had anything to work with, script-wise.  But if I never saw another knee-jerk bitter ex-wife character in anything, ever, I'd consider that a minor life victory.  Since Reid's character is designed to be an annoying wet blanket, quirks like her unusual scratchy voice and one-note acting made me almost instantly want to see her get eaten by a shark.  Or a gang of sharks.  Or whatever you call a bunch of sharks, if not an actual shark gang.  And as much as I hate to spoil anything for you, you're going to have to put up with her for the entire duration of the film (because Fin and April have children together - yes, one's a doofus and the other is a layer of pancake makeup away from the sort of self-absorption that usually is accompanied with a Depeche Mode cassette tape - and those children mean they must end up together FOR ALL ETERNITY).  There's not even an awareness in the film of how awful and annoying April is; there could have been a lot of fun teased out of trolling the audience by having her repeatedly escaping doom in improbable fashion.

As for the look of the film, it's just crappy.  Everything is ridiculously dark, even when there are beach scenes in broad daylight.  I watched the HD broadcast version of the film, and there was pixelation around a lot of the effects (and not even in a cheesy, so bad it's good way).  Director Anthony C. Ferrante kept trying to pass off footage from the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans as shark-infested flooded Los Angeles neighborhoods.  Obviously, a movie called "Sharknado" isn't going to have the visual polish of something like "The Perfect Storm," so maybe just watch this on the smallest TV you have in your house, and start drinking heavily about fifteen minutes before you start this to fuzz up your vision and smooth out the visual problems within.

Again, none of this matters.  The real question is whether this is entertaining (and you have to also consider that, since this was a TV movie, there's zero chance of any real eye-candy, although there were a lot of lingering shots on bikini bottoms in the first ten minutes).  The answer to that is "kinda."  Everything about this screams stupid, so I can't rightfully be outraged when "Sharknado" delivers on that promise.  My intense dislike of Tara Reid's character (and the character's refusal to fill her destiny and become chum) means that scenes that might be passable for other people were negatives for me.  I did love the sheer 'Murica-ness of Baz's solution to the tornadoes (blow them up, if you were wondering).  But when the poster says "Enough Said," it's probably accurate to say that you might get more enjoyment out of taking five minutes out of your day to just ponder the sheer absurdity of the concept of "Sharknado" than you would get out of taking two hours to actually watch the film (and then enduring your inevitable hangover the next morning).  The premise is the draw, but the execution and delivery of the film fails to add anything meaningful to that premise.

And yet, none of that matters because "Sharknado."

1 / 5 - TV

National Lampoon's Van Wilder - 2002

"National Lampoon's Van Wilder" - 2002
Dir. by Walt Becker - 1 hr. 32 min.

by Clayton Hollifield

If anyone is going to knock off "Animal House," National Lampoon has more right to do so than anyone else.  Granted, there are many, many years between "Animal House" and "Van Wilder," but it's their own template, so I won't judge them too harshly for following it.  And if you're inclined to these kinds of movies, you can do a lot worse than "Van Wilder."

The titular character, Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds), is entering his seventh year at Coolidge College, with no prospect of graduation in sight.  Van has put those years to use becoming a benevolent BMOC, using his charm and connections to grease difficult paths for other students.  However, his unusual approach to matriculating means that the student newspaper's editor (Tom Everett Scott) wants a story on Van, and assigns the story to hotshot cutie pie Gwen Pearson (Tara Reid).  Van is more interested in dating Gwen, which incurs the wrath of her boyfriend, pre-med student Richard Bagg (Daniel Cosgrove).  Ultimately, Van is put into a situation where he has to graduate or leave Coolidge without a degree.

Let's get to the good stuff first.  This is very much a "save the house" movie, through and through.  It's a useful comedy plot, because it allows for unmotivated or mired characters to be spurred to action, and because it's a situation that plays out over a fixed amount of time.  It might be the very best stock comedy plot, because it doesn't require a strong antagonist, but does allow weaselly and jerkish characters to do their thing without having to construct a story that props them up as particularly cunning or powerful.  Instead, they merely have to be opportunistic and not at all sympathetic to the hero.  And the hero isn't put in the position of vanquishing (or victimizing) another character, which would be a more complicated morality tale.

In a "save the house" movie, the entire film rises and falls on individual comedic performances.  Ryan Reynolds is a capable lead in comedies (he's pretty good here, even if the film isn't anything spectacular), and it's easy to see why he kept getting motormouth charmer roles after this.  This also might have been one of the very last films before Tara Reid was better known as a train-wreck than as an actress.  Van Wilder's two assistants, played by Kal Penn and Teck Holmes, aren't bad in their supporting roles (particularly Penn).  There are a number of cameos (Erik Estrada, Edie McClurg, Curtis "Booger" Armstrong) that are fun, too.

"National Lampoon's Van Wilder" is a fun movie, even if it's inconsequential and formulaic (which aren't deal-breakers with comedy - performances and building great comedic scenes are far more important).  It's a tough movie to recommend though.  There has been a steady stream of college movies like this one over the last couple of decades, and which ones a viewer is partial to seems to be largely correlated to when that viewer was in college himself, give or take a couple of years.  If you're the right age, "Van Wilder" is a fun way to blow a couple of hours (especially if you're doing so with a few beers or whatever).  If you're not in that age range, it's like Mick Jagger wrote: "Who wants yesterday's papers?"

2 / 5 - TV