My fear of sharks is well documented, so well documented that friends are forever sending me images of sharks out of a loving desire to frighten the excrement from my body. So, when I heard there was a movie coming out called Sharknado, I knew I needed to get in front of the train. I was going to watch Sharknado with my eyes wide open, if it required a clockworkian contraption to do it. Much as I tried to cure myself of the fear in second grade by reading every book I could find on the subject, I thought it would be healthy for me to expand my ridiculous fear of sharks in swimming pools to also include airborne sharks watch, and would make it a little harder for my friends to terrorize me.
Last weekend, I hunkered down for the storm.
I have not laughed so hard in ages.
The Fug Girls did a marvelous recap of the movie, and I am sending you over to their website to read it and weep with laughter. It is brilliant. They have screen grabs. I do not. Go read, then come back.
Are you back? Excellent.
So here’s what I loved about this movie: Everything.
It was terrible and awful in that way that comes right back around to being beautiful. I absolutely lost my mind laughing within the first five minutes, so much so that Thor left the computer game he was playing to come investigate, and stayed to howl right along with me. At one point, I was choking, I was laughing so hard.
Listen, there are a lot of different types of bad. This was the best kind. This was the kind that said, “We know we are making a movie about a tornado full of sharks, and we are going to play it out like we are 9 and 10 year old kids working with action figures. We are going to tap into our inner 5th graders and we are going to have more fun than Spielberg ever did.” And they did. I think the funniest thing to me was that they didn’t even TRY for continuity or realism in their effects. In some scenes meant to portray flooded out areas, from some angles the ground was absolutely dry. The actors were absolutely dry!
I mean, there is a scene where a school bus is stranded, with water up above its bumper. So when you see exterior shots of the bus, you see all this water. When you get a shot from the bridge above the bus, you can see right down the alley where the street is bone dry. 5th graders were directing these angles! Happy, thrilled, exuberant 5th graders. It didn’t matter because THERE WAS A TORNADO FULL OF SHARKS!
What did I not like: Nothing. This movie is my new best friend.
Worst scene: Sharks fall from the sky into a swimming pool–sharks in a swimming pool being my greatest irrational fear.
Best scene: Sharks fall from the sky into a swimming pool–sharks in a swimming pool being my greatest irrational fear. Ian Ziering douses the pool with gasoline and SETS IT ON FIRE. YES!!!
5 out of 5 stars
The Outside Lane 