Apparently due to the recent success of films like: Jaws, Jaws 2 and Jaws 3, the marketing wizards at CBS decided that a great way to attract a younger viewing audience to it's Sunday night schedule was to make Spring Break Shark Attack. Somewhere along the line, an executive said "hey, that sounds like a great idea." Unfortunately, there was nobody there to stop the madness.
The made-for-TV-shark-action-drama, or 'sharactirama,' opens by introducing us to the main character, Danielle, a smart, perky college girl, whose parents have refused to let her attend the spring break festivities in Florida because as dad says: "Boys only think of one thing!" Score one for Dad, not only is he correct (boys only think with their genitals), he's what we like to call "foreshadowing." Sooner than you can say "clichéd montage," and unbeknownst to her parents, Danielle has escaped to the lovely shark infested beaches of Florida. She meets up with her friends and the sharactirama is afoot.
I must applaud the makers of Spring Break Shark Attack for their attempt to combine and repackage portions of the great shark movies. For instance, the main character Danielle's brother is a nerdy marine biologist who notices a rise in sharks around the coral reef and wants to warn the public. Sound familiar? Before any good carnage begins in this, we are forced to sit through about one and a half hours of an ABC After School Special on date-rape. Danielle and friends meet two male meat-heads, one of which is involved romantically with Danielle's buddy. The other male character, JT (Justin Baldoni), is hot for Danielle. JT attempts to swoon her but his attempts are intercepted by Shane (Riley Smith). Shane runs the local boat charter with his mom and meets Danielle when she looks for her brother Quint err, I mean what's his name? Oh who cares. After about an hour, JT finally slips a roofie into Danielle's drink and his date-rape is almost complete when sneaky Shane comes to check up on Danielle. Next they are all out on a charter boat and the script starts to resemble something from a bizarre version of Polanski's Knife on the Water.
Meanwhile Shane's mom, Mary (Kathy Baker), is renting charter boats to Joel Gately (Bryan Brown, a poor man's Michael Caine). Mr. Gately is somehow involved in the neighboring beach's chamber of commerce. The point is, he's renting boats at strange hours and paying with large sums of cash. Next thing you know, "we're gonna need a bigger boat!" Yes, something's rotten with Gately, and if you think that is a spoiler, you'd have to be completely lobotomized not to know it within the first ten minutes.
After a pointless hour or so of character development and romance, we finally get some shark killing. Although the gore is quite cartoonish, it's somewhat rewarding. We've been watching this steaming pile of crap, and we deserve some arms bit off or at least the date-rapist's torso bitten in two. It doesn't quite get that graphic, but thankfully the Kuleshov effect is in full swing (shot of unsuspecting character in water, cut to stock footage of shark, cut to water filled with bright red paint).
I'd be a complete liar if I said Shark Attack didn't make me laugh out loud at least four or five times. It's bad, but the producers have spent money on the things that are important to the story: lots of sun tanned and oiled up extras. The absence of shark footage from this film is mostly hilarious if not entertaining and when there is shark footage; it's either a fake dorsal fin or its 16mm stock footage.
It's probably best to describe Spring Break Shark Attack as the From Dusk Till Dawn of TV Shark movies: it starts off as a lifetime movie about date rape (that's TV for women in case you don't have cable), and midway metamorphosizes into an incoherent and badly written shark film. Worthy of a few laughs, and plenty of eye candy, it's so clichéd it's a must-see for anyone bored on a Sunday night.
The made-for-TV-shark-action-drama, or 'sharactirama,' opens by introducing us to the main character, Danielle, a smart, perky college girl, whose parents have refused to let her attend the spring break festivities in Florida because as dad says: "Boys only think of one thing!" Score one for Dad, not only is he correct (boys only think with their genitals), he's what we like to call "foreshadowing." Sooner than you can say "clichéd montage," and unbeknownst to her parents, Danielle has escaped to the lovely shark infested beaches of Florida. She meets up with her friends and the sharactirama is afoot.
I must applaud the makers of Spring Break Shark Attack for their attempt to combine and repackage portions of the great shark movies. For instance, the main character Danielle's brother is a nerdy marine biologist who notices a rise in sharks around the coral reef and wants to warn the public. Sound familiar? Before any good carnage begins in this, we are forced to sit through about one and a half hours of an ABC After School Special on date-rape. Danielle and friends meet two male meat-heads, one of which is involved romantically with Danielle's buddy. The other male character, JT (Justin Baldoni), is hot for Danielle. JT attempts to swoon her but his attempts are intercepted by Shane (Riley Smith). Shane runs the local boat charter with his mom and meets Danielle when she looks for her brother Quint err, I mean what's his name? Oh who cares. After about an hour, JT finally slips a roofie into Danielle's drink and his date-rape is almost complete when sneaky Shane comes to check up on Danielle. Next they are all out on a charter boat and the script starts to resemble something from a bizarre version of Polanski's Knife on the Water.
Meanwhile Shane's mom, Mary (Kathy Baker), is renting charter boats to Joel Gately (Bryan Brown, a poor man's Michael Caine). Mr. Gately is somehow involved in the neighboring beach's chamber of commerce. The point is, he's renting boats at strange hours and paying with large sums of cash. Next thing you know, "we're gonna need a bigger boat!" Yes, something's rotten with Gately, and if you think that is a spoiler, you'd have to be completely lobotomized not to know it within the first ten minutes.
After a pointless hour or so of character development and romance, we finally get some shark killing. Although the gore is quite cartoonish, it's somewhat rewarding. We've been watching this steaming pile of crap, and we deserve some arms bit off or at least the date-rapist's torso bitten in two. It doesn't quite get that graphic, but thankfully the Kuleshov effect is in full swing (shot of unsuspecting character in water, cut to stock footage of shark, cut to water filled with bright red paint).
I'd be a complete liar if I said Shark Attack didn't make me laugh out loud at least four or five times. It's bad, but the producers have spent money on the things that are important to the story: lots of sun tanned and oiled up extras. The absence of shark footage from this film is mostly hilarious if not entertaining and when there is shark footage; it's either a fake dorsal fin or its 16mm stock footage.
It's probably best to describe Spring Break Shark Attack as the From Dusk Till Dawn of TV Shark movies: it starts off as a lifetime movie about date rape (that's TV for women in case you don't have cable), and midway metamorphosizes into an incoherent and badly written shark film. Worthy of a few laughs, and plenty of eye candy, it's so clichéd it's a must-see for anyone bored on a Sunday night.