Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Best. Movie. Ever. I could stop right there with that gross overstatement and allow the masses to just percolate on that for a minute but I will elaborate. I believe the last Sci-Fi channel-Asylum bastard child I saw was the instant classic ‘Mega Fault’ starring the late Brittany Murphy, a movie that was shocking in its entertaining awfulness. Then my brother calls me up and says ‘Hey man, Paul Logan’s in Mega Piranha. Tonight!’ For starters that’s a conversation that regular people simply do not have, but my poor brother suffers from the same sickness that I do, one that was passed down to us by our beloved mother, that being a love of the gawdawful. I don’t even know if ‘love’ is the right word but more so an inability to avoid. An addiction. Like crack. Anyway, as bad as ‘Mega Fault’ may have been, amazingly, ‘Mega Piranha’ is even worse. And as a by product of this awfulness this movie right here is exponentially more entertaining. That new 3D big budget Piranha movie coming down the pike doesn’t stand a chance.

Dateline Venezuela. Pepe and Consuela are lounging on the world’s filthiest beach surrounded by the world’s filthiest water and decide to jump in for a swim. Idiots. They are promptly eaten by a bunch of angry piranha. No big deal right? I mean that is what piranha do. Well a couple of days later the U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, some Venezuelan diplomat and a boat full of the most gloriously over developed bikini-clad women you would ever want to see are discussing something or another on this filthy beach when the boat is eaten by these same piranha. Yes, the boat, and they are just getting started.

Word has gotten back to U.S. Secretary Grady, as played by the LEGENDARY Barry Williams, that our ambassador was assassinated by terrorist which in turn leads the Secretary to dispatch his top super badass in wait, Special Forces Op badass Jason Fitch (Paul Logan) who is off to Venezuela to get to the bottom of this. Okay,

it would have been nice to know what this ‘secretary’ was the secretary of - secretary of unexplained fish attacks we presume - and one would also think that assassination of a U.S. Ambassador would require the attention of more than one stray soldier, but he is a badass.

When Fitch touches ground he is accosted by super duper biologist Sarah Monroe, played by former pop songstress Tiffany who we believe should’ve found a last name by now considering she is pushing hard against forty. Just sayin’. She explains that one of her experiments, something called fishus genus gigantus, or Big Ass Piranha for those of you without biology degrees (which I have, thank you), has been stolen, or released or something and it is responsible for these deaths. It will never be explained to us how these fish got into the river so don’t think about that to much. However Venezuelan strongman Colonel Diaz (David Labiosa) assures Fitch that the doc is looney and it is instead terrorists, that is until Fitch drops a three foot piranha on his desk.

A lot of stuff happens after this, I mean a lot of stuff, but basically it boils down to a muscle bound badass and a slightly overweight pop star doing battle against schools of piranha which have grown to the size of luxury hotels AND a crazed Venezuelan strongman who has inexplicably flown into U.S airspace and is blowing up stuff.

My friends, it is no secret that The Asylum has made some bad movies. We know this. Hell, they know this. And while it could be argued that ‘Mega Piranha’ is about as bad as anything they’ve ever made, this movie here has so much frenetic energy while at the same time completely ignoring any kind of attention to detail, that it is almost irresistible. To highlight this we present to you Exhibit C-4. There is a hectic car chase where Col. Diaz is chasing our heroes through the streets of Venezuela in their Geo Metro. What car was Col. Diaz driving? That’s a damn good question. You see he got into a Black Chevy Suburban, but sometimes the Suburban would drive so fast that it would magically transform into Suzuki XL-7 only again to morph into a 1992 Ford Explorer. Surely the filmmakers knew that we would notice three different cars driven by the same guy in the same scene, but who has time for that kind of nonsense when you are making movie magic!

While Paul Logan has a lot of muscles and Tiffany has red hair and Barry Williams is still alive and working the true star of this flick were the Piranha themselves. Eventually they would grow to the size of hotels, launch themselves into oil refineries and luxury resorts and eat battleships and nuclear submarines while having the ability to withstand nuclear bombs. These piranhas were awesome beyond belief, only trumped by the stupidity of the people who were trying to kill them. They gave Col. Diaz a hard way to go because he was trying to shoot schools of piranha to death, which I must admit was a stupid idea by the colonel. Note that actor David Labiosa was brilliant in this movie. But apparently the problem with the colonel’s plan was that his guns just weren’t big enough because now we got the USA and our massive cannons shooting at them, which also didn’t work. Note to self, shooting at fish is an ineffective way to eliminate them. As a matter of fact it was looking like the piranha were going to win in this movie, which would’ve been cool, until special ops badass Fitch drew up the STUPIDEST PLAN EVER, a plan which consisted of swimming along side the XXXXL fish, and lo and behold if it didn’t work. Well, not really, but they were celebrating at the end so we are going to roll with it. Make sure you stay for the Paul Logan / Tiffany big kiss at the end. It was actually pretty gross.

There is so much to discuss but alas we have run out of time. The terribleness of ‘Mega Piranha’ cannot be minimized. I get that. But damn… Piranha the size of hotels eating submarines? Morphing automobiles? Non-stop action? Overweight pop stars? Come on man… where I come from we call that Check and Mate.