A Day of Dumb: “Piranha 3D” & “The Expendables”
Piranha 3D: Written by Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg; Directed by Alexandre Aja; Stars: Jerry O’Connell, Elizabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Kelly Brook and Adam Scott. Story: The prehistoric, flesh-eating fish wreak havoc on a lake that just happens to be a regional hotspot for sexy college students to spend their spring break.
The Expendables: A group of mercenaries for hire are sent to a remote island to overtake a crooked General. They learn the General is a puppet for an American former agent and the lead mercenary falls for a local woman who is in fact the daughter of the general and becomes a pawn in a violent game.
Seen by Adam and Lars August 29, 2010
LARS:
To celebrate the end of one of the worst movie summers in history, Adam and I decided to officially do a “Day of Dumb”. So we went for a classic double feature afternoon, and these two movies seemed the perfect pairing. It all reminded me of my childhood double features, the best of which was a pairing of the original “Friday the 13th” and “Enter the Dragon”. Talk about excellent trash!
Somewhat surprisingly, the better of the two movies is “Piranha 3D”. Maybe because the director Alexandre Aja (who did the great underrated French thriller “Haute Tension” before Hollywood called him over to do schlock) completely understands what’s expected from the genre and follows the rulebook to a T. He’s got the requisite unexpected occurrence that sets everything into motion, a good dose of gratuitous nudity, kids in peril, spectacular deaths and some celebrity cameos. Add some pissed off fish with razor-sharp teeth and some fun 3D effects, and it all adds up to a good, if utterly predictable, time. Elizabeth Shue (who still looks amazing), Jerry O’Connell, Christopher Lloyd, Eli Roth and Ving Rhames are all merrily slumming it here. Even Richard Dreyfuss shows up in a case of fun stunt casting. This flick will have a long, long life on DVD and late night TV, where you’ll probably come across it and think you’ll watch ten minutes of it, but end up watching the whole thing, because, you know, it’s just damn fun. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that we’ve been railing against 3D a lot. In this case, I think the movie would have worked just fine without it, but it wasn’t offensive or annoying. Well, aside from the fact that the theatre charged an extra $5 for the film (making it a whopping $17.50 to see it), which just seems wrong to me.
Now, what to say about “The Expendables”? It’s funny at times, but mostly unwittingly. Sly doesn’t do tongue-in-cheek; he plays it all very straightforward. The biggest problem here is probably the complete lack of any story of interest. The characters are all clichés and cardboard cutouts. And while the same could be said for “Piranhas”, the story of that movie is so straightforward (man vs. evil fish) that it doesn’t need anything else. In the case of “The Expendables” everyone lives up to the title – as the viewer, you couldn’t care less who lives and dies, as no one is given any kind of motivation or back history or any of all that nonsense. Sure, it’s amusing to see people like Dolph Lundgren again (was he really always that bad an actor?) and the brief scene with the Governator, Bruce Willis and Sly is fun too, but it’s in the same empty calorie way that a corndog tastes good for the first few bites, then the grossness of what you’re ingesting creeps up on you. Shit blows up, men with enormous muscles beat each other senseless, chicks are ogled and protected and the difference between the bad guys and the good guys is negligible. There isn’t a shred of original thought anywhere in sight. And it’s slightly boring because it’s all been seen a million times before.
The highlight of the screening was when the screen changed to the famous Microsoft Windows ‘blue screen of death’. Welcome to digital cinema. Maybe they should have gone with a Mac?
ADAM:
And so there we sat, Lars and me, waiting to begin our “Day of Dumb,” prepared to lose some brain cells (and if the stories about bed bugs invading the movie theaters of New York City were true, possibly a little blood). In retrospect, particularly by escaping the theater bite free, this was a good exercise. But the film choices weren’t so foolish either.
Working in advertising probably helps the perspective, but the reality is we approached these two films with so little expectations that the result made at least one of the films seem pretty decent. I know – it’s not fair to the mainstream more complex movies that try so hard and fall slightly short. But the fact is, like sitting down to a narrow-cast children’s animated movie, there is only so much to anticipate. For “Piranha 3D”, I believed I’d see schlock. I thought there’d be blood and some hokey gore, maybe a topless chick or two and some very bad acting, along with some poor effects and gratuitous attempts at cool 3D. What I got was a movie that didn’t take itself so seriously (to its credit), had more gore than anyone probably expects (though Alex Aja of High Tension fame did direct it), full-frontal nudity, lesbianism and some great cameos. The guy’s guy in me was very content by the last reel. And I can only imagine that regardless of the moderate to good revenue brought in by the theatrical release will be (forgive me) blow out of the water by the monies generated by the cable and DVD releases. This is the DVD every thirteen year old boy will have his parents (who never saw it) buy him, so he can laugh at the dismemberment and drool over the breathtaking Kelly Brook, amongst others.
And dismemberment seems as good a segway than any to start talking about “The Expendables,” which begins with an action scene that sees one foe torn in half at the waist and pretty much continues the body count at a steady clip until the final reel.
I truly was expecting a borrowed reprise of the body count chroma key titling from “Hot Shots, Part Deux” to flash across the screen as this approached the honor of being the bloodiest movie ever based on fatalities. As it unfolds, the action sequences is all that holds the film together, as the “story” connective tissue – a contrived love story between Stallone and the daughter of the Evil general that might warm the cold heart of lost Sly is more than a bit ridiculous. This is most likely a result of the fact that we don’t really care about Sly or any of the other appropriately titled expendables. Only Jason Statham’s Lee Christmas has reason for care. He’s also arguably the best actor of the bunch, which isn’t saying much. Sure Mickey Rourke has chops in an expanded cameo (and he actually does something with what he’s given, but he’s not given much). The best line of the film comes in the scene that was trailer fodder, featuring Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzennegger. I won’t spoil it.
But you don’t go to this movie for the lines really. It’s for firepower and a leg broken in two or three places. And though there is a lot that’s repetitive (especially the knife throwing), I can’t say it really disappoints. If anything the action is more than you need in places, really (again, forgive me) overkill. The last battle sequence on a hypothetical Central American island location is an annihilation so extensive, utilizing so much firepower, that not only are all the man-made structures completely leveled, vehicles reduced to dust and bad guys vaporized, but one has to wonder if even the remaining single-cell creatures managed to survive.
