Sharknado!!

Sharknado.  The title alone was enough to send a buzz around the world.  Does it live up to the hype?  Absolutely.  This movie is so bad it's good.  It's hilarious.  Do not watch alone though, it's much better with a group of friends and a big dose of sarcastic comments.

Sharknado is the latest production in a long line of Z grade, low budget, straight to DVD movies from "The Asylum".  The Asylum is an American movie studio which realised back in 2007 that it could make more money from capitalising on cheap knock-offs of big budget studio productions than it could from making cheap movies with their own original ideas.  And very proud of it!  They zip between these similarly named knock offs and making their own 'original' horror films such as Sharknado, Mega Piranha, 2 Headed Shark Attack.  According to that scion of accuracy Wikipedia, the budgets for each movie are less than $1,000,000 (a sliver of most Hollywood independent films let alone the mega-blockbuster) and the scripts are usually knocked up in 4 to 6 weeks with pre-production times of a few weeks and actual filming taking a few weeks.  That's extremely short.  And it really shows!

The ridiculous premise to the film is that, due to some bad weather (I think anyway), a huge pack of sharks have moved in close to the California coast.  Then they are picked up by a storm and deposited into various land-locked areas of Hollywood thanks to various far-fetched water borne methods.  The culmination of which is a tornado containing multiple sharks.  The word ridiculous doesn't go far enough to describe the ways these sharks get where they're trying to go.

The main character in the film is Fin Shepard, played by Iain Ziering (annoying Steve from Beverly Hills 90210).  He owns a bar right on the beach, whose chief bartender is a kick-ass chick who happens to be in love with him but Fin's too dumb to notice.  Fin decides that he has to take her, his Aussie mate Baz and old mate George on a mission to 'rescue' Fin's daughter, son and ex-wife from the sharky emergency about to hit their inland Hollywood Hills home.  Fin's ex-wife is played by Tara Reid (still best known for American Pie) and she shows absolutely no acting skills whatsoever in this, her big comeback film.

The movie is a series of battles with the sharks, connected by Fin, Nova, Baz and George travelling around and trying to save everyone, because Fin is like the biggest hero ever, he's so heroic duuuude.  One of the most ludicrous scenes occurs where he spots a school bus trapped in rising flood waters, which appear to get lower and lower as the rescue progresses, taking several minutes in the movie but would actually take several hours in reality.  The continuity in this movie is absolutely non-existent, and I am still yet to figure out whether this is deliberate to be funny, or accidental because of the short production times and low budgets.  Regardless of which reason, it makes for rich pickings for your own sarcastic commentary. One minute there's a hurricane, the next it's sunny and blue skies, then we get a graphic of rain on a camera which is unrelated to anything.

I spent a large amount of the running time saying "Why would they do this" or "Why would that happen" which tells you that the script has a few problems.  But I thoroughly enjoyed it and got a huge amount of laughs from it.  Some movies are just plain bad, but this one definitely makes it into the so bad it's good category.  I wish to thank my friends B & W for taping this off Foxtel and inviting us over for a Sharknado party, which really made my week.  Highly recommended for a fun night in!  Hopefully the already in production sequel "Sharknado 2: The Second One" - I kid you not - will be out really soon and keep up the same low standards.