Piranha 3D (2010) Review by: Rich Wilson

You can look at 3D a couple of ways. Positively, it’s another spectrum of modern-day cinema designed to enhance the viewing experience of the audience and take us that next step to actually being in the movie. When it works, for instance when we almost felt among the foliage of the planet in "Avatar", it’s fabulous. Or, negatively, it’s just a cheap and easy way for studio heads who have greenlit multi-million dollar multiplex turds to gain the revenue back on opening weekend, knowing full well that impressionable teens will flock in droves to slap the glasses on, regardless of script, direction, photography or performance.

Step forward "Clash Of The Titans", "The Last Airbender", and a thousand others. However, in "Piranha 3D" there’s a moment when it starts to make sense, when you can actually accept that this latest Hollywood gimmick is being used correctly. For a couple of minutes there’s a nude underwater lesbian ballet scene, starlets Riley Steele and Kelly Brook twisting their limbs and everything else out into the audience in glorious slow motion. It’s very good. And then it gets better, because a thousand pissed-off fish with razors for teeth tear them apart, and regardless of a big studio release of not, you then know you’re firmly in exploitation territory.

 
Joe Dante’s original "Piranha" was the best of a bunch of get-the-fuck-out-the-water imitators that came along after "Jaws", partly because of John Sayles sharp script and partly because of Dante’s background with Roger Corman, from whom he learnt what a good ‘B’ picture needs - violence, sex, cheap gags, splatter and a lean running time. Happily, remake-king Alexandra Aja has changed the story but not the elements, this time setting the action over a spring break weekend which provides plenty of opportunity for wet t-shirts, ogling and beer-bonging, and a multitude of good looking flesh for the pesky predators to shred in suitably gory ways.

 
Aja obviously had a great time thinking of suitable gags, and tits and ass fly out of the screen, a girl pukes up a fish (and a fish pukes up a… well, you’ll see), faces fall off, eyeballs rupture, and the piranhas still thankfully make that amusing screeching noise from the original. The flimsy story is nothing more than an excuse to get to the next splatter set-piece, but Elisabeth Shue is the feisty cop, Ving Rhames attacks the fish with a shotgun, Christopher Lloyd is delivers the science lecture and Jerry O’Connell gets his dick ripped off. Somewhere in the whole mess Richard Dreyfuss also recreates Matt Hooper from Jaws. None of the cast have to try too hard and all look like they’re having a great time.

 
This is a Friday night movie, a film that will live on DVD with a beer in your hand and snacks in a bowl. It tries hard for suspense and partially succeeds, but the major selling point is the chaos and the carnage, and it scores high on both. Don’t walk into "Piranha 3D" expecting scientific exploration, high drama and a message regarding man versus nature. Do expect a high dose of big, dumb, visceral fun, and as good a time you’ll have in the cinema this year. What other film can you say thank the Society of Amputee Surfers in the credits? Based on this, we can only hope they have the rights to remake Jim Cameron’s "Piranha II : Flying Killers" next.

- Rich Wilson