Piranha 3-D, Mi Amour

In a few short sentences, I will blow your mind.

Piranha 3D largely accomplishes what it sets out to do in creating a fun, gory, and decidedly unsadistic creature feature. The only real possible misstep is that the movie covers its fairly slow first half by bombarding the viewer with nudity and unnecessary backstory to characters. However, such a technique is commonplace enough, and both the boobshots and actors are pretty quality to the point that at least my (admittedly semi-tipsy) self was entertained enough until everything went to hell. I have no idea if people who only really like modern horror would enjoy this, but for people like me who were basically raised on the USA Network's "Up All Night," this movie was a treat, and probably my favorite Aja film thus far.

WELL THAT'S IT. Seriously, I would be a pathetic sad man if I went into any real detail on this film. To its credit, Piranha 3D actually meets how a normal person would imagine such a film to be in the best possible light. There are tits, ridiculous deaths, actors clearly enjoying an easy paycheck. There's no real need to discuss anything in depth, as this film is about as complex as a wafer, and unlike Scott Pilgrim, I can't imagine anyone is going to cling to this film as some sort of essential sounding bell of their life's epoch. Besides, heaven forbid someone is reading this without having seen the film. The best I can say about Piranha 3D is this: if you think that there is a chance you might have fun at a movie called Piranha 3D, you will have fun watching it.

Or at least I'd like to say that, but a perusal of various horror reviews have shown a distinct minority that disliked the film. Most of the these reviews are awful, and I'm probably just going to spend the rest of the review laughing at them, so feel free to let yourself out of the moving car.

Probably the worst was Cinefatastique's review, which was written by the horror fan who clearly now only enjoys SEKRIT INDIE HORROR, and never quite understood the point of anything. Pretty much every line of the review includes one movie reference or another. Let me let you in on a secret: I'm terrible at writing reviews of music, and frequently resort to talking about other albums because it helps to distract the audience from the fact that you can't really illuminate what's right/wrong with the thing you're actually reviewing. I'm not saying comparisons are per se wrong, but it's essentially laziness when the main point of your review is that "these things are bad because I liked these other scenes from obscure movies better."

Another point from the review, that's been repeated in others, is that Aja is somehow trying to be too clever and is trying to alter audience expectation, or something. These it's essentially impossible to have an "straight" slasher or creature feature anymore. The best one can hope for is that the movie doesn't force you to glance at the fourth wall, and thankfully Piranha 3D avoids that. I'm willing to accept that Aja is perhaps being a little too clever in showing the relationship between sex and violence when a topless para-sailor is floating in the air, but is the audience really going to notice something like that? Clearly, faux-intellectual shit like Hostel wants you to consider IMPORTANT ISSUES behind the sadism, but getting mad at a T&A gorefest because there might be some sort of subtext strikes me as a critic trying to find uranium in a coal mine.

Bottom line, unless you have some sort of horrible auto-literary analysis disorder that can't be cured by whiskey, and you like seeing tits and/or ridiculous 3D gore, go see this movie.

ODDS 'n ENDS:

1) Jesus Christ, how did Vampire Suck make more than Scott Pilgrim or Piranha 3D? I don't really feel bad for the latter considering it got a decent per-theater average, but seeing Pilgrim get around 15 million in two weeks is depressing, both for the fact that it deserved to have more attention, and now I'm going to have to deal with years of wretched nerds act like the movie is their fucking special treasure that the normals cannot appreciate.

2) I've seen all the Resident Evil films, and at least looked up plot summaries to all of the games, and I still have no idea what was going on in that trailer.

3) This was actually the first 3-D film I've seen, and the only thing I can really say about it is that my girlfriend and I enjoyed making Blues Brothers jokes before the movie started.