About.com Rating

In 1978, Joe Dante's Piranha paid homage to (politically correct term for "ripped off") Jaws, the smash hit from three years earlier. Now, more than 30 years later, there's Piranha 3D, a remake of Dante's film that in fact plays more like an "homage".

The Plot

In the midst of spring break at Lake Victoria, Arizona, 17-year-old Jake (Steven R. McQueen) is tasked with babysitting his young brother and sister, Zane and Laura.

When he's invited to work as a location scout for the lateste Wild Wild Girls video shoot, however, Jake bribes his siblings into silence as he ventures onto the party boat.

Unbeknownst to all, a recent underwater tremor has created a chasm deep below the surface, freeing a school of maneating prehistoric piranha. Jake's mother, Sheriff Julie Forester (Elizabeth Shue), is one of the first to witness the creatures' destructive potential, and she and a scientist (Adam Scott) studying the tremor rush to save not only the spring breakers, but also her family from the legion of killer fish.

The End Result

What can you say about a movie that features 3-D vomit spewing into the camera? Piranha 3D feels like director Alexandre Aja's catharsis, blowing off the steam of deadly serious fare like High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes and Mirrors. It's the horror equivalent of a beer commercial: a gratuitous guilty pleasure with broad characterizations and low-brow humor. It's a perfect summer horror movie -- in content if not in execution.

Aside from a couple of jump scares, Piranha isn't played for fright as much as over-the-top gore and nudity. It's a "hard R" film that's a throwback to the un-PC '80s, with sex and violence to spare. It's never dull, but watching it is like gorging on candy: there's no nutritional value, and it threatens to become nauseatingly excessive.

The story resembles the 1978 original only in the basic "killer-fish-eating-vacationers" premise. Otherwise, all of the details have changed to increase the camp appeal (prehistoric piranha) and the R-rating (nudity-filled spring break). Frankly, they should have tinkered wit the plot more to add some -- I hesitate to use the term "depth" for a film like this -- twists and turns. The story is so basic, in fact, that it doesn't even bother with the "mayor-dismisses-warnings-in-favor-of-profit" scene that's become such a staple of this type of picture.

The linchpin of Piranha is, of course, the action. Aja knows what horror fans want, and he delivers it with reckless abandon, going for the throat with kills that tread the fine line between gleefully gruesome and tastelessly excessive. Imagine putting human beings through a blender, and you'll get an idea of the gory aftermath of the animal attacks. As a horror fan, I appreciate the effort, even if the end result is uneven. Some kills come off as overly cartoonish, while others are matter-of-fact. After you've seen a few body parts gnawed to the bone, the effect wears off, and it all becomes expected.

The 3-D element adds to the camp appeal of the film, but it also lends to a series of groan-worthy scenes in which Aja seems to feel obliged to shove objects into viewers' faces. The vomit is actually one of the better moments. Otherwise, it feels gimmicky and distracting.

Still, for what it is, Piranha 3D works more often than not. It's shallow adult fun that plays everything with tongue firmly in cheek. It actually feels more like a parody of Jaws than the original Piranha, featuring a heroic sheriff, a cameo by Richard Dreyfuss and even tossing in Jaws' famous "dolly zoom" technique in one scene. Piranha 3D is no Jaws, of course...maybe Jaws 2.

The Skinny

• Acting: B- (A likeable cameo-filled cast.)
• Direction: C+ (Uneven impact; staging of action sequences lacks complexity.)
• Script: C- (Fun in tone but predictable and lacking in twists, turns or nuances.)
• Gore/Effects: B- (Gory almost to the point of excess; 3-D effects lack punch.)
• Overall: C+ (A graphic yet lighthearted summer diversion.)

Piranha 3D is directed by Alexandre Aja and is rated R for sequences of strong bloody horror violence and gore, graphic nudity, sexual content, language and some drug use. Release date: August 20, 2010.