Piranha 3-D (2010)
Starring: Elizabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Adam Scott, Jerry O’Connell, Steven McQueen, Jessica Szohr, Kelly Brock, Richard Dreyfus, Christopher Lloyd, Eli Roth, Dina Meyer
Directed by: Alexandre Aja
Written by: Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg
Running Time: 89 minutes
Rating: 3.5 (out of 5)
Blood and tits in 3-D.
There you go, that’s Piranha 3-D.
Seriously, there isn’t much more. I should have figured out what I was in for when my local theater, which I attend every week, decided that this was the week that they should check my ID card to see if I was ok to attend a R-rated movie (keep in mind I don’t look anywhere close to being under 18).
At a scant 89 minutes, Piranha 3-D is barely long enough to be qualified as a movie, and considering that the first half an hour is, for the most part, pretty boring, I grew scared as I watched that this movie was going to be lack the shock value that I expected going in. Fortunately my fears were quickly allayed. While Piranha 3-D starts out by setting up its story involving a sheriff who is a single mother of three children who is overburdened, blah blah blah, it quickly dumps any semblance of a story and instead becomes a movie concerned with only two things: sex and violence.
Hooray.
In all honesty, you could see less naked people in a hard core porno and you could see less blood in a slaughterhouse. Piranha 3-D was obviously meant to shock the audience not only with its gratuitous exposure of several attractive young ladies (and we are talking full nudity and not just quick glimpses) and well as several scenes involving the male sexual organs as well (just to keep the movie balanced for both male and female audiences), but also with levels of bloodletting and gore that have been unseen in mainstream movies for a long time.
But rest assured, Piranha 3-D doesn’t just concentrate on quantity of sex and violence, the quality of this material is very high as well. If you are going to see Piranha 3-D because you want to ogle young co-eds, you will not be disappointed. Without giving anything away, suffice it to say that the girls in this movie are not just in the background, but instead there are several scenes that were obviously included to satisfy a young male audience by showing off the benefits of 3-D movie making.
And, for the horror fans that see Piranha 3-D, there seems to have been much effort put into making you happy as well. While not as convoluted as the deaths in the Saw series of movies, Piranha 3-D offers much more variety of carnage than just fish biting people, and many of the death featured in the film are actually quite unique and entertaining.
Piranha 3-D is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. However, if you appreciate 80’s horror films that offer nudity, graphic violence, little to no plot, morals clauses (those who are good survive, those are immoral don’t), and even cheap 3-D (I’m look at you Freddy and Jason), then this movie is right up your alley. Piranha 3-D is not the best movie I have ever seen, but I did have a hell of a lot of fun watching it.
One final note: I am still up in the air on the 3-D thing. Avatar’s visuals were amazing. Clash of the Titans’ visuals were horrific. Piranha 3-D doesn’t really feel like the 3-D does much for the movie most of the time, BUT (and this is a BIG disclaimer), when it does work for the movie it works REALLY well.
