Sharknado

It's a little disturbing actually as a couple of friends of mine, within hours of each other, heard of this movie's existence, 'Sharknado' and both felt the need to reach out to me and educate me. They have no intentions of watching this movie, just wanted to let me know so I wouldn't miss it. This makes me sad. They didn't let me know when 'Salmon Fishing on the Yemen' came out or 'The Kite Runner', I mean I do watch legitimate movies… but this… this is what I am ultimately associated with. Damn.

Where to start? Somewhere off the coast of the Mexico there are sharks in the water. A lot of them. There are more sharks in these waters than plankton. Next thing you know, there's a storm throwing sharks all over the place. This isn't a good thing.

Moving along, we get to hang out at the bar of Fin (Ian Ziering), the retired hotshot surfing legend and Fin is a little concerned at the storm looming off the coast of his bar. Just mere minutes ago Fin and his boy Baz (Jaason Simmons) survived a vicious attack of sharks that ate a very pretty surfer lady, and a bunch of other people for that matter, but to be honest nobody really cares about those dead people as life moves on as usual. At least until sharks start flying into the windows of Fin's club. Now the thing about these sharks… I'm thinking, even if I'm a bloodthirsty man-eater, I'd be far more concerned about trying to find a way to get my ass back in the water as opposed to flopping around the floor of a bar and trying to eat people. But who am I to question the motivation of bloodthirsty man-eater?

Now Fin, his boy Baz, his finely formed barmaid Nova (Cassie Scerbo) and bar drunk George (John Heard?) have to make a run for it. The run they are making is towards Fin's ex-wife's house so he can save his daughter. After meeting the hateful April (Tara Reid)

who is the wife, and the disturbed Claudia (Aubrey Peeples) who is the daughter, they probably would've been better off dead. At least for the audience. Say like when Fin wanted to save a busload of school kids and this ex-wife chastised him for being a selfish bastard.

What we haven't seen yet, however, is a sharknado. I mean there are sharks all over the place, flopping around on the streets, trying to chew their way through cars and doing all kinds of other stuff that a shark out of water probably wouldn't do, but where's the sharnado!

Relax bro… it's coming. First we have to scoop up Fin's helicopter pilot son Matt (Chuck Hittinger), his ability to fly a helicopter being one of the critical 'come in handy' type skills that people in these movies tend to have… because the SHARKNADO IS A COMING!!! We're talking tornadoes filled with sharks! The hell you say! I kid you not my friends. And what's the best way to deal with a tornado filled with sharks? Uh… a chainsaw? Duh. Roll credits.

Hmmm…. 'Sharknado'. What do you want to bet that they had a title for this long before they had a script? In fact, me and another friend were thinking this just might be the best title for a Sci-Fi channel original ever, but then we remembered 'Mansquito' which is still the king of wacky movie titles. And a better movie. Now this isn't to say that director Anthony C. Ferrante's 'Sharknado' is a bad movie… well, okay… it is a bad movie, but it is a movie about sharks in tornadoes so it really has little option but to be a bad movie, but this isn't to say that it lacks entertainment value.

We were concerned early on as 'Sharknado' started to resemble The Asylum's previous disaster movie, the awful '500 MPH Storm' which consisted of almost entirely people driving or running away from weather phenomena, and we were getting a lot that early as Ian Ziering and his people were running from weather phenomena, albeit phenomena with sharks swimming in the streets of Los Angeles, and that was kind of boring. Plus they were bitching at each other, drawing in horrible family melodrama into the movie, which had me doubly concerned. But around the time Fin decided to save that school bus full of children, this movie launched itself into being the complete and total bag of lunacy that I knew it could be.

Normally at this juncture in my article I would single out specific examples of lunacy in this film, but that's pointless because the entire movie is pure, unadulterated lunacy. Once the storyteller has established that sharks whirl around in tornadoes, flying through the air, seemingly able to live quite easily without the assistance of water while still maintaining their voracious appetites, clearly all bets are off.

Are we going to discuss the performances? No we are not! How can you act against sharks in tornados? You can't, you just roll with it. We will mention that John Heard looked to be drunk for real and that while Tara Reid has seen better days, she still doesn't look old enough to be the mother two adult children.

Is Sharknado a good movie? You know it's not, that's a silly question. But since it's become a bit of a national phenomenon, people are going to watch who are aren't used to this kind of stuff. I feel sorry them as they will be shocked at its horrificness. But we vets know quality trash when we see it, and as it turns out, 'Sharknado' is high quality garbage. And I've never seen 'Salmon Fishing in Yemen' and never will, and I'd walk through molten broken glass to watch a movie called 'Sharknado', but I do watch real movies! On occasion.