Questionably Content

Piranha 3D (2010)


Directed by: Alexander Aja

Starring: Steven R. McQueen, Elisabeth Shue, Jessica Szohr, Adam Scott, Jerry O'Connell

Other Actors of Note: Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd, Ving Rhames, Eli Roth,

Plot: After a sudden underwater tremor sets free scores of the prehistoric man-eating fish, an unlikely group of strangers must band together to stop themselves from becoming fish food for the area's new razor-toothed residents.



It's been a pretty weak summer filled with a lot of flops and a fair amount of movies that were good but not great (thus why I haven't reviewed them) I don't need to tell you that "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" is awesome, nor that "Predators" was a worthwhile sequel to the original (still not as good as "Predator 2", fuck the haters.) But I do feel the need to comment on "Piranha 3D" because it's a more than worthwhile remake, it's not making much money, and it's the best movie you'll see this summer.

The movie opens with Richard Dreyfuss reprising his role as oceanographer Matt Hooper from "Jaws." Hooper's moved away from the ocean, obviously due to fear of being eaten by fish and seeing as Quint died a sharky death and Chief Brody was the casualty of a bad sequel explaining why a good actor wouldn't want to be in it, he's the only member of the trio left. He's sitting in a boat drinking Amity beer and singing along to "Show Me the Way to Go Home" on his radio. As he's trying to reel in a fish, he knocks a bottle of beer of the boat which falls to the bottom of the lake and inadvertently causes an earthquake that releases an entire underwater lake filled with hungry prehistoric piranha. Hooper finally suffers the death the book gave him but Spielberg left out of the movie.

Open on our small town with a name I can't remember as douche bags pour in to drink, fuck, and listen to terrible music. Here we meet our hero Jake (Steven R. McQueen) and his mother, the sheriff, Julie (Elizabeth Shue)

Jake comes to pick up his little sister from band practice and meets Joe Francis analogue Derrick Jones (Jerry O'Connell), the creator of "Wild Wild Girls" who hires Jake to show him some good locations to shoot his bad soft core porn.

Predictably everything gets fucked up and fish eat everyone. There's really not much more to explain here.


Steven R. McQueen, who imdb tells me is in "The Vampire Diaries", is a good actor in spite of what the information between those commas tells me. It's unfair to compare him to his grandfather (the late Steve McQueen for those of you who are a little slow) so I won't do that. I will simply say that Jake comes across as a shy teenage boy very realistically and that is seemingly deceptively hard for a 21-year-old actor if every other movie with older actors playing teenagers is any indication.

Jessica Szohr, who imdb tells me is in "Gossip Girl", is a good actress in spite of what the information between those commas tells me. I will simply say that Kelly comes across as a girl-next-door type very realistically and that is seemingly deceptively hard for a 25-year-old actress if every other movie with older actors playing teenagers is any indication.

Now, with the teens out of the way, let's get to the characters and actors we actually give a fuck about:

Elisabeth Shue plays Chief Brody from "Jaws", she exactly plays him, which is impressive seeing as she is a woman, and not Roy Scheider. Okay, she's not exactly Chief Brody but she's the exact same thing. Shue shows off what a badass she can be when the script allows and is a much more compelling hero than Jake.

Jerry O'Connell is a scene stealer as both comedic relief and the closest thing this movie has to a human villain. Every single line, movement, or action on O'Connell's part is memorable and usually hilarious.

If there had to be somebody to give the lame exposition filled with plot holes, it had to be Christopher Lloyd. Lloyd appears in all his Doc Brown splendor and his brief screen time is filled with magic.

Ving Rhames plays a role that was obviously written for Ving Rhames and does his best to fill out the checklist for "badass black guy." He says both "I'm getting to old for this" and "*insert bad pun here* Mothafucka!"


Forget the trailer you saw. The CG fish look much better in the movie. In fact all of the effects in this movie look good, though most of the underwater attacks are quick and hard to see, but I think that's intentional.

This is another of the dreaded post-conversion 3D movies. To be fair, Aja decided to this before post-conversion proved to be so catastrophically horrible and this movie was filmed with 3D in mind so this is easily the best post-conversion film I've seen yet.

The one scene Aja did film with 3D cameras is a long and hilarious underwater nude lesbian scene between Kelly Brook and Riley Steel. This scene is one of many instances of nudity that are shockingly prevalent in this film. This movie is about 20% plot and characters and 80% tits and gore. Aja obviously didn't want to make a SyFy original movie here so he gives fans of cheesy monster movies what they want, monster action. You will not believe that this movie is not NC-17 when you see it. There are so many memorable gore moments that I dare not spoil, in the biggest douche bag massacre ever filmed. There's roughly ten minutes of just solid deaths and it should please the gore hounds out there.

The movie is quite obviously tongue-in cheek but that fortunately never spills over to the characters. This movie wouldn't have been as great is the actors were all hamming it up. Instead everyone plays this whole thing deadpan which only proves to make every single blood drenched minute of it a load of fun.

If you like a fun, violent, and nudity-filled horror movie that delights in its own campy greatness then I recommend that you watch "Piranha 3-D" by any means necessary. 5 out of 5.