While some of you may think us critics can’t enjoy a movie unless it has to words “Academy Award Winning” or “Arthouse” attached to it, I’ve come to say I’m completely insulted. Critics have souls too you know. We aren’t lifeless ghouls. We don’t put a damper on films you like because we enjoy it, we do it cause the films you like are shit. Don’t take it the wrong way, it’s just how we are made (That was a joke, please don’t crucify me).
But yes I have a strong sense of humor and can recognize when a terrible movie exists simply for a bunch of friends to get shit-faced while watching and laugh their asses off. And what is the perfect movie for that kind of scenario?
Behold the king of the “So bad it’s good” genre: Sharknado, an over-the-top and ludicrous adventure that is horrible, it’s bad, I am not saying this a good movie, it makes an Adam Sandler production look like The Wolf of Wall Street. But it is one of the funniest things you will find on Netflix complete with hammy acting, hilarious one-liners, shoddy special effects and a plot that is as gleefully fun as it is ridiculously stupid.
Brought to us by the clearly cocaine induced minds of the Sci-Fi channel, who have brought us movies like the classic Sharktopus vs Whalewolf and the unforgettable Frankenfish (Look them up they are real!), the plot sees a group of people in Los Angeles try to outrun the tornado of the century, which has appeared to suck basically every shark on planet Earth into its vortex and causes them to fly in the air and kill people. Forming a monstrous creation, a satanic partnership of shark and tornado…a Sharknado.
It is as beautiful as it sounds.
When you have Steve Sanders from 90210 (Ian Ziering), a plastic faced Tara Reid (Cause you know, she has terrible plastic surgery), a guy with the worst Australian accent in the history of film and the dad from Home Alone (John Heard) running from a tornado full of sharks, it’s already great. Add in a few shots of tequila and a drinking game and you have what some may call “The Best Fucking Night Ever”.
None of the actors care, and it’s all the better for it. They know the movie is shit, so they play it up. Ziering is playing a character named Fin, do I have to say anything else? Actually Ziering works well for the Sharknado quite well. Never taking himself or the premise too seriously, he hams it up to perfection and gives us one of the oddest career revitalization stories in recent memory. John Heard is in the movie for about five minutes (No joke) and plays the local drunk at a bar, so it’s likely he didn’t know he was being filmed. Everyone else is just there for a paycheck, which helps since all the supporting characters are just there to either give unnecessary exposition or get killed off in hysterical fashion. Except for Tara Reid, playing Fin’s ex-wife, who’s acting like she’s in a drama directed by Steve Spielberg. She tries too hard in every scene and her range of acting coupled with her seemingly unmovable face makes her look confused and slightly annoyed by everything going on around her. She actually manages to be the worst thing in a movie called Sharknado, which is actually worth 20 fucking Oscars in its own right.
I already explained the plot. What else is there to say? Sharks are sucked into a tornado and now people are going to die. That’s it! Yes there’s a subplot about Finn and his wife possible reconciling but it takes a backseat to real stars of the show: the sharks. Whenever the sharks appear, they enter with a bang, eating their way through everything in sight, even eating a woman in midair as she falls from a helicopter and at one point one is sawed in half by a chainsaw as it flies through the air. It’s amazing.
Having said that, have there ever been worse CGI in a film, made for TV or otherwise? Probably. But Sharknado‘s special effects are dreadful. Well, it is on the Sci-Fi channel, not exactly known for their Avatar like effects. Yet the sharks look like rubber and the tornado looks like something out of a Nickelodeon cartoon, and somehow that lack of effort adds to the movie’s cheese factor even more. Then add in the one-liners that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger blush and characters that are cardboard cutouts of the straight off the assembly line and it all comes together into a gorgeous blend of greatness that will be remembered fondly by the social media generation.
If you haven’t seen Sharknado yet, I’m actually impressed. The film is so internet friendly, with gifs and memes literally jumping off the screen, and has a premise so mind-numbingly insane that not seeing it is almost like saying you’ve never seen Harry Potter. This is our generation’s Plan 9 From Outer Space, our Reefer Madness, the film we will put on when we are older to laugh and remember the good times we had watching it. When you have a ton of friends over, drinking or not (I recommend the former), put on this movie. It may be terrible but damn is it a ton of fun.