I don't understand the sexual politics of this movie at all. It has a maniacal embrace of the grindhouse philosophy that more naked breasts make a better movie, and it objectifies the college girls from beginning to end. But then it throws in a character for the express purpose of mocking the creator of those Girls Gone Wild videos. He's a complete slimeball who we're clearly meant to hate. And, more confusingly, we're clearly meant to hate him because he objectifies women. When one of his porn actresses is trying to pull him out of the water and to safety, he yells, "Help me you bitch." And then they give us Elizabeth Shue as the Sheriff, a no-nonsense 47 year old mom who isn't objectified but who hasn't been desexualized either, which is refreshing. But there are so many lingering wet t-shirt shots. So many ass shots. There is a naked underwater lesbian make out that is set to new age earth goddess style music and that goes on for so long that you start to worry the director forgot he wasn't actually making a porn movie himself. An insane mermaid slow motion porn movie.
And it's such a crazy aesthetic. The last half hour of this movie mixes gore with T&A so indiscriminately that it hurts to think about it too hard. A woman in a bikini gets sliced from her shoulder down diagonally to her opposite hip. She has that stunned, "I just got cut in half" look on her face, and then the bra falls open, showing off her breasts. After a moment of breast exposure, the two halves of her body slide apart with a sick wet sound, and then the top half falls lifeless toward the camera. Tit first. In slow motion 3D. A woman is para-sailing topless, and they keep her in the water too long, only to speed the boat up so that she hangs bloody and naked from the parachute. Another character is eaten from the waist down and then the Piranhas fight over his penis. Then one of them throws it up.
It's like an emotionally stunted imaginative twelve year old boy directed huge chunks of the movie. I couldn't figure it out, but I think I loved it.
That possibly sounds like the best movie I have never seen. I shall fix this immediately.
ReplyDeleteI'd never read any reviews of this movie, but your descriptions of some of the scenes have just made it a must-see for me.
ReplyDeleteThe movie makes the perceptive point that PIRANHAS AREN'T HOMO.
ReplyDeletei think you would like monkey shines. its got that great horrible good thing going in a suspense movie. here be the netflicks summary:
ReplyDeleteQuadriplegic law student Allan Mann (Jason Beghe) gets in-home care from Ella, a supersmart monkey injected with human brain tissue. Initially, it's a dynamite relationship -- until she starts anticipating Allan's thoughts and acting out his subconscious desires.
I think the whole "insane 12 year old" aesthetic is just pandering to Internet youth culture. We're seeing it more and more. Sometimes it leads to great things, and sometimes it leads to "Snakes on a Plane".
ReplyDeletei remember seeing the previews and wishing i was a dj or musician, because i think that "there's something in the water!" quote would be an AWESOME sample. but i digress.
ReplyDeletei appreciate movies that go so overboard that you can just turn off your brain and go for sensory overload of gore and T&A... but i'm always cautious about them at the same time - i remember feeling so betrayed by Showgirls for putting a serious, disturbing rape scene into something that would otherwise have been total camp fun. not that the rape scene was in and of itself bad - in fact, it was very realistic, not sexy at all and in a lot of other movies, would have made a lot of sense - but i find that trying to make those statements in a movie that needs to be ridiculous and light is too jarring.
and now i'm thinking that this comment might belong in your entry about rape, except that - this seems to be a running theme in horror - the sexualized violence, even before the advent of "torture porn". and what's interesting to me is how subtle things can make such a huge difference, esp in terms of impact - music, prelude, etc. so on the one hand, i might watch a woman get sliced in half with breast flying towards me and laugh out loud, or i might feel totally disgusted and ask for my money back....... now i have to go watch piranha.
as long as we go into a movie and enjoy it, i think it doesn't matter if we watched it because we wanted to learn something or to laugh at it. the problem is when the movie demands to be taken seriously, but doesn't have the chops. showgirls wanted to be taken seriously, hence the very serious rape scene. the makers of showgirls just didn't have that je ne sais qui needed to make it a good movie. some movies don't mind the joke and prefer that if you watch, at least you are laughing with them.
ReplyDeletePiranha was so ridiculously over the top that I didn't even know what to make of it. I remember walking out of the theatre afterward and saying something along the lines of: "Wow, what a really, really bad movie. That was so bad. But I think I loved it."
ReplyDelete"Sometimes it leads to great things, and sometimes it leads to "Snakes on a Plane"."
ReplyDeleteYou say that as if Snakes on a Plane isn't great.
I loved Piranha. I'm still not sure if that's the title or if it is supposed to have the 3D tacked on the end. It was so stupid and ridiculous that I too wondered if it was supposed to be a satire, and I've heard that argument made several times; I don't have it in me to agree, but I can't dismiss it out of hand, either.
This is one of those movies I watched and thought the same thing. Is this funny because its bad, or is it funny because it was intended to be bad?
ReplyDeleteI laughed SO hard almost the entire time during Piranha (3D!). Regardless of what the creators intended, that movie was complete and total camp black comedy awesomeness. Man, what a great summer time movie. It was definitely one of my favorite movies of 2010.
ReplyDeletethis movie Piranha is such a bloody movie and some of the scenes are really grouse but have one of the best thriller movie. i hope this have part 3.
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