I have two things to say about Jerry O'Connell. The first is that NO ONE plays a douche like he does. We've seen it a couple times over the years, and he keeps giving a douchier performance. The second is that I'm thrilled I don't have 3D, or I would have been even more disturbed by his much discussed (at least on nighttime talk shows) full Monty appearance. I'll continue on with a joint comment about Elizabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Richard Dreyfuss, and Christopher Lloyd… I can't believe these guys are all still alive. I haven't seen most of these guys in a decade or more. Seeing them all at the same time was near-mind blowing.
While some of this is really tired out… the rogue animals (or in this case, rogue prehistoric animals) running amok and feeding off of whatever dumb, drunken coeds they happen to find in their domain, some of this was pretty good on a technical level. I remember reading that a school of piranha could deflesh a cow in seconds, and that is certainly well portrayed here. While the original movie was a spoof of Jaws, this movie is pretty much focused on upping the carnage provided by cinema's favorite seafood, which wasn't entirely unpleasant, although some of the bloody scenes were way, way too long. On the other hand, I'm a big fan of natural selection actually being applied to humanity every once in awhile. It would help make us all a bit smarter. If this had been in real life, half these idiots would have sued the sheriff, despite the fact that they ignored the warnings and the sheriff's order to get out of the water.
I didn't even attempt to go see this in the theaters and I'm sorry that I didn't. This wasn't a great movie, but it got a bunch of adrenaline running. Even before the action revs up this is has an upbeat feel to it that makes it difficult for me to say that this wasn't worth watching. Was it a bit predictable? Yeah, a bit. I knew who was going to survive and who wasn't from early on in the carnage. But that didn't mean that the teasers weren't fun.
