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Of all the creature features we have endured over the years, only a few have been truly remarkable, and Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is one of them. The success of that film spawned a long string of movies about marine animals wreaking havoc, mostly featuring sharks or killer whales. One of these was Piranha, an amusing little B-movie whose opening scene delivered the obligatory dose of nudity. It later received a sequel directed by James Cameron, in which the fish had mutated and could fly.
Now, more than 30 years later, Piranha has been remade. The film does its best to be as exploitative as possible while simultaneously trying to appeal to mainstream audiences by aiming for the kind of spectacle associated with Godzilla. It succeeds at the former but fails at the latter.
Exploitative, on the other hand, it is. Revolving around Spring Break in a small town filled with teens thinking about two things—sex and beer—the movie at times almost becomes a soft-core flick. To emphasize this, the movie features glamour models like Kelly Brook and porn stars like Gianna Michaels and Riley Steele. So, as you might imagine, nudity is heavily featured in Piranha, including a minutes-long sequence in which Riley Steele and Kelly Brook swim completely naked underwater and make out. Not that it has anything to do with the story, but I didn’t really mind.
Basically, this movie is an even bigger Jaws rip-off than the original Piranha ever was. The Roy Scheider role is filled here by Elisabeth Shue, who plays the town’s sheriff and a single mother. When the attacks begin, her children are supposed to be at home, but of course they end up stranded on a boat that is taking on water. What good are kids in a movie if you don’t have to save them from impending danger?
The story is hardly original, as you can tell, but what elevates the movie above the majority of beasts-gone-wild films is the cast. There are plenty of small roles for familiar faces such as Richard Dreyfuss, Eli Roth, Dina Meyer, Adam Scott and Christopher Lloyd. Other recognizable names include Jerry O’Connell as a sleazy porn producer and Ving Rhames, who goes medieval on the fish’s asses with an outboard motor.
Director Alexandre Aja aims to create a lighthearted movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously. He succeeds to some extent. Once the fish start attacking, the film becomes a fun ride, but before that happens it is somewhat short on laughs.
I do like how exploitative the movie is. Tits and ass are everywhere, sometimes erotic, sometimes just plain funny, such as Gianna Michaels’ cameo. Who can blame the fish for wanting to sink their teeth into meat like that?
One moment even feels distinctly Troma-esque: a guy desperately trying to escape the piranhas ends up driving his boat straight over a crowd of teenagers.
This is not a great movie, nor was it ever intended to be. However, I got the impression that the filmmakers were trying to create some sort of definitive spoof of the genre, and sadly they fail at that. It’s a fun movie that you can never take seriously for a moment, but it isn’t quite what I thought it would be.
If the image of a piranha eating a penis and then spitting it out half-chewed at the camera is your idea of funny, then Piranha is the movie for you.
