Shark Night 3D

PLOT (spoiler alert!!!):

Set in Louisiana, seven Tulane University undergraduates – Sara (Sara Paxton), Nick (Dustin Milligan), Beth (Katharine McPhee), Malik (Sinqua Walls), Maya (Alyssa Diaz), Blake (Chris Zylka) and Gordon (Joel David Moore) – drive to Sara’s family vacation home on a private lake near Lake Pontchartrain. At a bait shop, Sara encounters her old boyfriend, Dennis (Chris Carmack) and his friend, Red (Joshua Leonard). Dennis and Red make racial taunts to Malik and Maya, his Latina fiancee, but Sara defuses the situation. Sara drives a speedboat recklessly to the vacation home, attracting the attention of Sheriff Sabin (Donal Logue). He chases her, frightening her friends, but then shares a beer with them. He tells Sara he is happy to see her back.

Nick, Blake, Malik and Maya go wakeboarding. A shark attacks Malik. Nick, Blake and Maya try to rescue him, but he swims back to shore – missing his right arm. When Nick swims into the lake to retrieve Malik’s arm, he is pursued by the shark, barely making it to shore. A pre-med student, he stabilizes Malik, then goes with Sara and Maya to take him to a hospital. Blood from Malik’s wound attracts a shark that attacks the boat. Maya is knocked into the water and eaten. The shark damages the steering column of the boat, causing it to crash into the gas pump in front of the boathouse, stranding everyone. Sara, Nick and Malik barely make it to shore. Because their cell phones have no reception and the house has no landline, they cannot call for help.

Dennis and Red arrive and agree to take Beth and Gordon to the mainland. Nick refuses to allow Malik to be moved. During the boat trip, Dennis reveals that he and Red have put the sharks in the lake and feed uppity college students to them. Dennis forces Gordon into the water by shooting him; he swims to a mangrove tree but is devoured by a bull shark when it leaps from the water and picks him off the trunk. Red and Dennis then force Beth to strip down to her bra and panties and feed her to cookiecutter sharks.

When Blake tells Malik that Maya was killed by a shark, Malik arms himself with a harpoon and ventures into the water to kill it. His wound attracts a hammerhead shark; he kills it but is further wounded. Nick and Blake pull the shark to shore, and Nick realizes that it was not the shark that took Malik’s arm and killed Maya. He also finds a camera attached to its belly. Blake decides to take Malik to the mainland on a jet ski. When they are pursued by sharks, Malik realizes that Blake can travel faster without him and sacrifices himself. Blake is killed when a great white shark breaches from the lake and plucks him off the jet ski.

Sheriff Sabin visits Sara and Nick. He gives them soup, and appears to use his radio to summon help. Nick passes out. When Sara goes to the kitchen to get a towel, she finds her dog has also passed out after eating the soup. Unnerved, she starts getting the cold towel to wake up Nick when she hears a signal on Sabin’s radio from Dennis and Red, describing Beth’s death. Now knowing Sabin to be shady, Sara takes a knife and is about to attack Sabin when Dennis arrives and disarms her. Dennis and Red take Sara out on their boat, while Sabin takes Nick to the boathouse and prepares to dunk him into the lake where sand tiger sharks await. Sabin reveals that he, Dennis and Red have been inspired by the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week and Faces of Death videos to film people being eaten by sharks. When Sabin is distracted by a CD player, Nick frees himself then ignites a can of gas. Badly burned, Sabin plunges into the lake and is eaten by the tiger sharks. Dennis reveals he is bitter at Sara for leaving him. Sara was unnerved by two accidents that occurred that day: her sudden loss of air and Dennis’s apparent lack of concern, and her slashing his face open with the boat propeller when she tried to escape him. After throwing her dog into the lake, Dennis and Red lower her into the lake in a shark cage. As Dennis is about to release Sara, Nick arrives. He tries to hold Red hostage and force Dennis to free her, but Dennis throws a knife into Red and charges Nick. Nick shoves Dennis into the water and goes to retrieve Sara. As Nick tries to set Sara free, Dennis appears from behind and tries strangling Nick. As a large Great white shark approaches towards them, Nick swims to the shore as the mako devours Dennis. Sara’s dog brings a speargun to Nick, and he uses it to kill the shark and free Sara. Nick, Sara and the dog swim to the boat. Sarah is brought back to consciousness, and the two share a kiss. As the camera pulls back a distance away from the boat, a great white shark breaches towards the surface and jumps towards the camera signifying that there are still sharks in the lake.

REVIEW:

In the horror genre, there tend to be lean towards being an awesome, bloody massacre, such as the classic Nightmare on Elm St. and Friday the 13th franchises (note…I said ORIGINAL!!!!). On the other hand, we have those that are supposed to be scary, but capitalize more on the cheesiness factor, such as Piranha 3D. Well, Shark Night 3D can’t make up its mind which side of the spectrum it belongs.

The film is about a bunch of college kids who are on some kind of break, I’m assuming spring. They take a trip up to Sara’s parent’s lake house so they can unwind from the stress of finals and whatnot. While they are having their fun on the water, Malik falls off his wakeboard and is attacked by a shark, who rips off his arm.

The rest of the film is spent arguing over whether the sharks actually exist, what to do with Malik, playing the blame game, etc. The result is not exactly a surprise, either.

I can’t comment on the 3D aspect of this, because I didn’t waste any money seeing this thing in theaters. I have to wonder why I even wasted my time watching it in the first place.

Setting this thing in Louisiana wasn’t exactly the best thing do, especially since they were using sharks. If they were going to use down here as a setting, then why not just use alligators? Having said that, Tulane University has a nice cameo in the first few minutes.

The sharks don’t look anywhere close to being real. I’m not too big on thing having that realistic look, but you have to at least try in this day and age. Audiences apparently can’t use or don’t have imagination any more, so things have to be pretty much spelled out for them.

Of course, the cast is just a bunch of generic, young Hollywood “stars”. They’re supposed to be playing college kids, but I would bet each one of them in their late 20s to mid 30s. Still, the girls weren’t too bad to look at, especially Sara Paxton. Those eyes hypnotized me, lemme tell ya!

All in all, this is not a good film. It takes itself entirely too seriously, opting to try to be something like Jaws, but fails, and does so miserably. This film, by all accounts, should have been a bloody great time, but instead, it turned out to be a painfully predictable and cliché waste of time. No, I do not suggest you even think of seeing this film. If you can mange to live your life without ever hearing or thinking about this again, you’ll be much better off. The people who made this should, to quote Garfield, “be drug out into the street and shot!” Yes, it is that bad!

1 1/2 out of 5 stars

Zoom: Academy for Superheroes

PLOT (spoiler alert!!!):

Decades prior to the start of the film, the American military sponsored a superhero group called “Team Zenith.” Its leaders were Jack Shepard (Tim Allen), aka Captain Zoom, who possessed super-speed, and his brother, Connor (Kevin Zegers), aka Concussion, who could project sonic blasts. The military tried to increase the team’s powers by exposing them to an experimental form of radiation called “Gamma-13″. This caused Concussion to become more powerful, but it also turned him evil. Concussion killed his teammates Marksman, Ace, and Daravia. Concussion was believed to be killed by Zoom in an explosion, but he had been sent into another dimension instead. Zoom lost his powers, and his brother.

Thirty years later, Dr. Grant (Chevy Chase), the scientist behind the original Zenith Project, discovers that Concussion is making his way back into their dimension. General Larraby (Rip Torn), the military officer in charge of the Project, decides to form a new Zenith Team to fight him.

Jack finds himself dragged back into the Project, this time as an instructor. He is told that a new team is needed to battle a great menace but is not told what it is. He is also told that if natural training does not prepare the new team in time, they will be exposed to Gamma-13. In their secret base, Area 52 (a reference to Area 51), he meets Marsha (Courteney Cox Arquette), who is a beautiful but clumsy psychologist, a big fan of Zoom’s, and knows of him only through the comic book propaganda adaptations of the team’s adventures.

The project holds an audition of would-be members, most of whom possess useless or disgusting powers. In the end, four young people are selected:

Dylan West, a 17-year-old boy who can turn invisible and has clairvoyance.
Summer Jones, a 16-year-old girl with telekinetic powers and empathic senses.
Tucker William, a 12-year-old boy with the power to enlarge any part of his body.
Cindy Collins, a 6-year-old girl with super strength.
All of them are shown as having problems adapting to normal life because of their powers. At first things do not go well. Jack is bitter about the past, and his sarcastic attitude disappoints Marsha. Dylan keeps trying to escape, Tucker has self-esteem problems and trouble controlling his powers, and the kids are annoyed by Jack’s attitude. The team eventually forces Jack to face the fact that he’s not really putting his heart into their training. Slowly things begin to come together. As the new team’s abilities improve, they adopt superhero identities.

Eventually, just as Concussion is about to arrive on Earth, it is discovered that Dylan also possesses a kind of clairsentience that allows him to discover not only Concussion’s location, but also the project’s true purpose: the team is meant merely as a distraction from the military’s plans to capture Concussion in a special net to send him back into another dimension. Marsha also reveals that she secretly possesses a superpower of her own: “super breath”, which appears as clouds of rainbow-colored wind. She uses this power to aid the team in their escape. Using a malfunctioning flying saucer stored in the base, Jack escapes with the team, including Marsha. He is dropped off at a point in a desert where Concussion will arrive, planning to try to talk to him. Jack tells the team to stay away, but they refuse.

When Concussion arrives, he refuses to listen to reason and starts firing sonic blasts at his brother. The rest of the team takes him on. Larraby orders the net to be fired, but Concussion blasts it away, and it almost lands on Cindy. This causes Jack to react and recover his speed, and he saves her. He then runs back to the base (tripping over in the process), puts on a new costume, and returns to battle his brother. Working together, the team (plus Marsha) knock Concussion into a high-speed vortex that Zoom creates by running around in a circle at super-speed; Dr. Grant yells to Zoom that if he closes the vortex, they can save Concussion; the vortex ultimately sucks the energy out of his body and restores him to normal. The two brothers are happily reunited.

At the end you see that Dylan is dating Summer, Summer is on the cheerleading team, using her telekinetic power to help build the pyramid, Tucker is the goalie on the soccer team, and Cindy is in a play, Rapunzel, and uses her power to pull the “prince” up the tower. In addition they still work together with Zoom as the new Zenith Team

REVIEW:

Remember the X-Men movies? What about Sky High? Well, Zoom: Academy for Superheroes is some kind of unimaginative, uninspired hybrid of the two.

I won’t waste too much time on this, because, quite frankly there is nothing here you haven’t seen before. First off, the plot…kids with super powers go to some school to learn how to use them. The difference here is that they are being trained by the government to stop a superhero turned villain that they accidentally created. See, nothing new, except maybe the government created villain…oh wait, that’s not new, either, is it?

The powers these kids have are…well, special. First we have the kid who can turn invisible. Nothing new there. Then there’s a psychic…another familiar power. Super strength…covered by a little girl. giving that strength to a little girl was actually one of the few strokes of brilliance encased in this schlock. Finally, there is the token fat kid who can make any part of his body grow? WTF?!? While this is a new power for the superhero genre, that doesn’t mean it is something audiences were clamoring for.

Tim Allen has super speed, or at least he was did before he lost his powers. Something else he lost apparently was his ability to act. It seems like all his movies involve him playing the same character. Here he is playing an almost identical shmuck like the one he portrayed in Galaxy Quest. I’m tempted to check out his new show and see if he’s just recycling his Home Improvement persona.

Chevy Chase and Courtney Cox-Arquette may very well be the best part of this otherwise worthless film. Both play scientists, with Cox being a lifelong fangirl of Zoom, who has a super power of her own….rainbow breath. Hey, it’s still an upgrade from making parts of your body grow, right? Chase does his usual goofy, absent-minded guy thing, and it works.

Fun fact: Both Spencer Breslin and Kate Mara have siblings in the business. You may have heard of Spencer’s little sister, Abigail, and Kate’s younger sister, Rooney (recently starring in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). One more thing about Kate, her family owns the Super Bowl champion New York Giants as well as the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The visual effects here seem to want to be a watered down, Saturday morning version of the kind of stuff we get in other superhero flicks, but they just seemed to not work here for some odd reason. Maybe it was the way they were executed along with this hopeless story?

Look, this isn’t as bad as I’m making it out to be. There are some good moments sprinkled throughout, but just when it seems as if things are going right, they take a wrong turn again. None more obvious than the final “battle”. I’ve never been more disappointed with a climax that I was this that. Even thinking about it has my blood pressure boiling!

To say that you should not see Zoom: Academy for Superheroes would be a disservice to the hard work that was actually put into this. While the finished product may not be that worthwhile, there was some thought put into it. Too bad that they just couldn’t come up with a better finished product than what this is. The film cannot decide what demographic it is after, be it teens, tween, kids, or whatever they can get. While I cannot, in good faith, recommend it, I can say that a good time can be had by all when they watch.

2 3/4 out of 5 stars