Somebody needs to get fired over this.
THIS movie should’ve been screening for weeks before it came out, just to get word out about all the “you’ve got to see this” insanity of it. Instead they barely even showed it to critics. Fools.
Anyway, just got back from it and it’s AWESOME – an authentic, no-bullshit splatterfest thats all about how much gore, blood, over-the-top death scenes and gratuitously-naked gorgeous women it can wring out of it’s thin premise (school of prehistoric super-piranha versus a lake full of Spring Break kids.)
I literally could not name a single film recently in theaters that spills as much onscreen blood in it’s whole running time as THIS one does during it’s extended ten-minute “piranha attack partygoers” sequence.
Riley Steel and Kelly Brook perform a nude underwater dance/lesbian sex-act with one another. For like two or three solid minutes. IN 3D. It is literally the single finest argument on behalf of the 3D format ever produced.
Ving Rhames essentially becomes the Bruce-Campbell-as-Ash of cinematic fish-fighters.
A speedboat drives through/over a crowd of several-dozen swimmers.
Christopher Lloyd is in it. So is Richard Dreyfuss. They are both awesome.
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 
You're advocating a 3d movie Bob. I don't care how good it was, 3d needs to die a horrible, horrible death right away and if a movie sells itself on heavily utilizing 3d technology it must be sacrificed for the greater good it must die.
LikeLike
HURR DURR EXPENDABLES WAS CRAP
HURR DURR PIRANHA IS A MASTERPIECE
Is a bit of fucking consistency to much to ask for?
LikeLike
Christopher Lloyd you say?
Sold.
LikeLike
Actually, that's a good point.
Porn has been pivotal in the development and early adoption of countless new technologies in the world of media.
I hadn't noticed until now but where the hell is all the 3D porn?
If there is a guaranteed way of spreading this technology it is porn, home photo development, polaroid cameras, home video cameras, fast dialup modems, cable internet, streaming video, improved compression algorithms, they were all helped along in the development phase by pornographers (and kinky amateurs) early adopting.
LikeLike
Sorry Bob, this looks almost as uninteresting as The Expendables did.
I will be going to see Scott Pilgrim again this week with my girlfriend though.
LikeLike
@Moshi
Nowhere here does Bob say that Pirahna is a masterpiece, all he says is that it sells itself as an awesome over-the-top gore-fest and on that promise it delivers.
Expendables tried to sell itself as an over-the-top cheesy 80s actioner, but then wound up taking itself too seriously and not sorting out its age rating and in the end failed to deliver the awesome-cheesy action it promised.
So one movie delivers on its promises and Bob praises it, the other falls foul of its promises so Bob criticizes it. Seems pretty consistant to me.
LikeLike
So a deluge of unrestrained tits and gore is a must see, but a collection meatheads playing commando is garbage?
One movie is “good” because it's depravitiy is boundless, and the other movie bad because it's not soaked in blood and violence?
For the sake of all humanity, there has to be something wrong with that. Don't get me wrong, I love tits and gore, but is that really a valid attribute to base a review on?
@Andrew:
You're totally right, dude. I think the reason there's no 3D porn is you can't easily do it your basement. I mean make 3D video, obviously. For the porn world to adopt something it has to be available to amateurs.
That's why porn didn't really takeoff untill video came along.
LikeLike
an afterthought:
I guess I'm old fashioned in that I still care about who's ass it is, and why it's farting…
LikeLike
A shit movie was panned, a good movie was praised. What's inconsistent about that?
What Bob's saying is that The Expendables does what it does badly and Pirahna does it well. Just because they're setting the bar at roughly the same level doesn't make them the same quality.
LikeLike
Don't be so scandalized, people. This has ever been Bob's MO: Trashy movies that come off as clever, or entertaining are forgiven many of their flaws. If such a movie is also pretentious, or has hints of pretention within it, it's declared a “misunderstood milestone work” or whatever film brat appelations he's chosen to use this week.
Backhanded compliments shelved for a moment… Given the sheer volume of stale, bland, action movies and horror films crawling out of Hollywood these days, for a movie to be a shameless, unabashed exploitative gore fest may yet make it worthy of respect.
… Also, consider it DOES harken back to the movies of his youth (as it does mine, by way of full disclosure)…
LikeLike
Wait, Dreyfuss… Please Bob, tell me he's doing the same role he did 'Jaws'.
LikeLike
Man, we nerds sure are an elitist bunch…
LikeLike
Oh my god! This movie is turning out to be everything I had hoped I would get out of The Expendables: Completely over the top B-movie gore with a distinctly 80s B-movie feel. Bad B-Movie horror films being sold on “3-D” is like the 80's mo.
Trashy cinema done right is not bad people. Everybody loves to watch brainless trash every now and again and there IS a big difference between as good brainless trash and bad brainless trash. Movies like Snakes on a Plane and the last Rambo= Good trash. Movies like The Expendables and transformers 2= unworthy trash.
Why must us film geeks be elitist pricks 100% of the time. It may seem like a double standard, praising films like Piranha 3d for the same reasons that you just bashed The Expendables, but there are subtle yet at the same time very clear reasons why the same things that would make one trashy movie great make another awful.
LikeLike
The Expendables was a disappointment because it wasn't the good kind of bad, it was just bad. But in Piranha 3D you get what you paid for, a fun gore-fest.
LikeLike
Okay, I hate to defend a 3d movie, but I can't stand the criticisms being leveled at Bob right now…
It is NOT even SLIGHTLY inconsistent to hate the Expendables and like Piranha 3D. Not every B-Movie is of the exact same quality, some movies can embrace cheesiness and create memorable action sequences and fun action despite their cheesiness and some merely go for the extremely generic and never manage to make something good of themselves.
If you disagree with his assessment, that's one thing. But don't act like it's impossibile to like one and dislike the other.
LikeLike
I probably won't go see this in theaters (money is tight and “Winter's Bone” is showing near me), but I might give it a look see on DVD because Adam Scott is in it.
LikeLike
Bombshell: This movie right now is 80% approved on Rotten Tomatoes.
LikeLike
@Moshi.
Lesbians. You can't expect your average heterosexual male to be able to make coherent choices when all the blood has left the brain.
LikeLike
@Andrew,
Actually, that's why Bluray is dominate, because porn went with it, as they did with VHS, over BetaMax.
Once 3D TV's start to come down and the technology is more readily available, we may very well see 3D porn. But, it takes time; Once Upon a Time in Mexico was Robert Rodriguez' attempt to bring HD films to the masses, but it's five years later, before we're really seeing it as a viable share of movies, using HD.
However, since the 3D stuff is a quick money-maker, it's been pushed harder, so I'm sure it won't take as long as HD.
LikeLike
Yup.
There's money in boobies, and presumably more money in 3D boobies.
There are a lot more 3D compatible monitors out there than 3D Tvs as far as I can tell.
Presumably the next gen consoles will have 3D technology too, since it is an order of magnitude easier to do games in 3D than films.
To reference The Bloodhound Gang.
Hooray for Boobies
LikeLike