PIRANHA (3 outta 5 stars) If you are in the mood for a stupid movie but don't want to waste your time with total crap... then Piranha may be the movie for you. It is an early collaboration between director Joe Dante and writer John Sayles (who went on to much bigger and better movies) and, in spite of the obviously low budget, their talents shine through. The dialogue is much better than you tend to get in movies like this... even though the actual plot (government-bred fresh water piranha mistakenly get fed into the US river system) is quite silly. Bradford Dillman makes a good leading man... this is probably one of the best roles he ever had... a drunken recluse who rises to the challenge when his young daughter's life is threatened. The movie was obviously made to capitalize on the success of "Jaws" (just check out the original poster artwork) but it is by far the most entertaining of the countless rip-offs that came out after Spielberg's blockbuster. Even though the fish puppets are far from convincing there are some very gruesome special effects... it's very unnerving to see young children screaming in terror as the bloody water starts churning... you'd never see anything like this in a mainstream horror movie nowadays.
