I guess Shark Attack movies are cheap to make.  I guess.  I mean I did an entire episode of my critically acclaimed television show ‘Totally Twisted Flix’ based on nothing but low budget shark attack movies, like seven movies on that show alone and I still had to leave a bunch on the table.  Like this one from a few years back ‘Malibu Shark Attack’.  Had we seen ‘Malibu Shark Attack’ before filming that particular episode it probably still wouldn’t have made the cut because, for one, it’s not crappy enough to be the worse movie on that show, that honor belonging to the Japanese import ‘Psycho Shark’, and for another it’s not good enough to be all that entertaining.  Not by a long shot.  But as we continue our goal to watch every Sci-Fi Original ever made, and a bunch of these Sci-Fi originals being shark movies, we had to get to it done sooner or later.

Heather (Peta Wilson), a Malibu lifeguard, used to love Chavez (Warren Christie), also a Malibu Lifeguard, but since he didn’t want to step up to the plate she dumped him and now is with Colin (Jeff Gannon) a developer who is building a resort down the way.  Does this have anything to do with sharks eating people?  No it doesn’t and the movie is worse for it.

Barb (Sonya Solamaa), a Malibu lifeguard, is in love with Keith (Daniel West) an unemployed actor.  Does this have anything to do with sharks eating people?  Why yes it does because Keith just proposed to Barb which means that these are people the sharks are going to eat in the very near future.

Just off the coast of Malibu an earthquake has occurred, with the double edged sword of this disaster being that it’s unleashed a tsunami that’s about to decimate the west coast, but worst is that it’s just released five or six prehistoric, super goofy looking goblin sharks.  Sure, they should’ve starved to death by now, but if movies have taught me anything, it’s that there are not a lot of creatures more robust than the locked away prehistoric sea beasts.

The waves are a hundred feet high, they’re rushing towards land at 200mph, but fortunately for our heroes they’ve managed to find safety in the ten foot high guard shack built with toothpicks.  Lamest Tsunami Ever.  Anyway, Barb, Keith, Heather, Chavez, Lifeguard Doug (Remi Broadway) and community service chick Jenny (Chelan Simmons) are basically trapped in the shack with Goblin Sharks circling the outside.  ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ meets ‘Jaws’ would be your pitch.  Oh and Jenny cut her leg.  Yes, to hear her scream and howl one would think she stepped on a landmine, but nope… it’s just a cut.   Barb is also a marine biology doctoral candidate and as such she’s Exposition Guy in this movie, at least for the little time she’s in this movie, but whenever somebody asked her a critical shark question she usually just shrugged her shoulders.  Worst Exposition Guy Ever.

Eventually Colin the developer makes his way to shack to save everybody, which he sucks at, but at least they made it back to his flooded development, a perfect pathway to buffet shark eats.  Our heroes are up against it and it’s looking real bad.  How are they going to get out of this predicament?  If you said ‘chainsaw’, then you are one step ahead of me.

There’s a laundry list of reasons why director David Lister’s ‘Malibu Shark Attack’ isn’t very good, starting with its star Peta Wilson.  Peta seemed less interested being in this movie than I was to watch this movie.  Peta, who also wasn’t all that interested in getting in shape to be a one piece sporting lifeguard in this movie, since she wore a huge t-shirt to cover her gut, looked like if she had to spend one more second in this movie she’d opt for a punch in that gut if it could get her out of this thing.  Fortunately Chelan and Remi’s youthful enthusiasm sort of made up for Peta’s lack thereof, and Warren Christie doing his best to channel the ghost of Bruce Willis did help, but not completely.  I mean we know Peta isn’t the second coming of Cate Blanchette or anything, but we’ve seen her is some stuff, like the ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’, and she was really good in that awful movie.

The meager budget, which probably attributed a lot to Peta’s disinterest, also contributed to some rather lousy shark CGI with a lot of that lousy shark CGI being used over and over and over again.  If I see those goblin sharks bump up against those toothpick columns one more time I’m gonna have to choke somebody.  In fact a lot of scenes got recycled over and over again.  The problem with recycling the hot chicks on the beach scenes is that the average guy is going to remember those scenes so when the hot chick serves that same volleyball in that same spot for the fourth time, we’ll probably notice that.

And why are the sharks bothering these guys?  It’s a tsunami, the entire west coast is flooded and I’m assuming there’s juicy humans floating all over the place and they can go pretty much go anywhere they please, but yet they are just terrorizing these losers.  Dumbest Goblin Sharks Ever.  One more thing that bothered me, though it probably shouldn’t have, was the reporter that kept showing up reporting stuff in front of the ‘devastation’ which basically consisted of some random litter.  I was thinking at some point a Goblin Shark would leap out of the sea and Sam Jackson this reporter, considering she must’ve broadcast a half dozen lame reports, but it never happened.  That was very disappointing. 

The main problem is that ‘Malibu Shark Attack’ is just mighty dull.  We spend too much time locked in enclosed rooms with imaginary bumping against these rooms listening to Chelan Simmons howling, watching Warren Christie be a jerk and observing Peta Wilson wishing she’d stayed in college.  That’s doesn’t make for inspired movie watching, and uninspired is what we got with ‘Malibu Shark Attack’.