Writers : Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan, Joel Soisson, Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg.
Stars : Danielle Panabaker, David Hasselhoff and Matt Bush.
Review :
Piranha 3D (2010) was almost the dictionary definition of a guilty pleasure. Amusing, chock full of gratuitous nudity and gore gags and with solid turns from a bunch of thesps who have maybe moved on from their peak, all held together by the sure hand of not exactly reliable director Alexandre Aja. It did what it set out to do with a little bit more for good measure.
So Piranha 3DD must have seemed like a good idea – keep up the funny, keep up the gore, stock up on some more recognisable actors willing to splash around in water and karo syrup for a few weeks – bob is your Aunt's husband.
The attempt to bottle the same lightning twice has much less stable results. The basic plot, even from the outset, seemed nervously similar to the terrible Jaws 3D and balances on a ridiculous premise. But we didn't come to a Piranha sequel and not expect our disbelief to be suspended and we haven't come for the plot, it's a sketch to set up the funny, boobs and blood.
The thought that we might not get the same level of funny, boobs and blood is suggested by the opening attack, featuring a very odd looking Gary Busey, which struggles to find ground between fart gags and a reasonable reintroduction of the prehistoric, flesh stripping fishies. From then on, the quality is variable. Many of the same elements are there but handled with a lot less control. The sole honourable exception being a sex scene that does handle a video nasty level, body horror moment with some gross out panache. That one aside, all of the gore gags lack the flair that Aja brought to the first one.
Danielle Panabaker struggles to manage a role that is both a thumb nail sketch and an attempt to merge the Sheriff Mom and girlfriend roles from the original. Others such as Matt Bush and Chris Zylka are all fine but again their roles are sketched almost to the level of caricature, making it impossible to care what happens to them one way or the other – when we're obviously meant to root for one to save the day and the other to get his comeuppance.
David Koechner is good value as the sleazy opportunist park owner but his role seems to have been lifted wholesale from at least a couple of other movies. Katrina Bowden's character comes off as being impossibly exposed but also impossibly difficult to kill, which is very strange. Despite this and her turn in Tucker & Dale, her acting talents are still probably best showcased by her semi recurring role in 30 Rock. Ving Rhames and Christopher Lloyd both return briefly and in their couple of scenes manage to showcase what the flick is lacking.
So, more of the same with diminishing returns. To be expected but it might surprise you how much the returns have been diminished. This is probably not the flick that you'll turn to as a drunken night winds down, I doubt I'll ever say the words "Fuck it, let's watch Piranha 3DD again."
There's also way more David Hasselhoff than should be allowable under the Human Rights Act.
Oh yeah. The running time. The film proper lasts exactly 70 minutes – that's one hour and ten minutes. The remainder of the advertised 82 minutes is 3 different credit sequences padded with bloopers, deleted scenes, more Hasselhoff (!) and weirdly a behind the scenes sequence of the final scene. You may feel cheated, you may feel like applauding the Corman level usage of all the footage you can. I didn't care either way, which is the problem with Piranha 3DD in a nutshell.
Credits by Chris Gill.
Source image : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1714203/
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