SHARK ATTACK 2 It's like Jaws 3, but not as good. Think about that. I guess this movie got made because Shark Attack 1 left viewers slavering for more. I never did see the first one around in the stores, not that it matters, since so far as I can tell from this movie, no sharks or characters or storylines are carried over from the first film, with only a cryptic reference to some guy who'd been pumping sharks full of steroids for cancer research to suggest why these sharks are unusual. (although the movie sure does a piss-poor job of demonstrating that they're unusual) Set and made in South Africa, Shark Attack 2 opens with two sister divers who get attacked by a shark, which kills one of them while the other (Nikita Ager) narrowly escapes. Later, she laments "She could've said goodbye!" The guy she's doing this scene with obviously did not have the heart to point out that it would be difficult to say goodbye underwater. With your head in a shark's mouth. Anyway, she's itchin' for revenge, and finds a fairly good opportunity for it when the local waterpark tycoon (Danny Keogh) convinces his, uh, chief...fish...warden...guy...to capture a great white shark alive for display. Anyway, the shark turns into a tub toy and escapes, although I'm willing to consider that just maybe, the effects model for this scene was just really small, and really bad, and the water suddenly went from deep and blue to shallow and brown. However, until that is proven to me beyond a reasonable doubt, I'm going with my "undercover tub toy" theory. To recapture or kill the man-eater before it eats again, it's up to Ager, the fish warden guy (Thorsten Kaye), and the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin! Okay, it's not really Steve Irwin, but he's obviously modeled on him, and he's played by Daniel Alexander. Man oh man, where do I start? Well, there is that tub toy. Full-sized tub toys turn up later when a gang of sharks attacks a surfing competition. The footage of the sharks is a mixture of stock footage, tub toys, what I thought of as "the fin-cam" (a camera mounted behind the shark's fin to film it as it cuts through the water), and very briefly, some suddenly not-bad CGI. But that's far enough along in the film that there are multiple sharks; for a while, there's just one. Though the stock footage makes it look like at least two or three different sharks, with different body shapes. Now, that's just how the sharks look, you should hear how they sound. Taking a cue from Jaws: The Revenge, the sound effects guys on this movie have made their sharks continually roar and growl like tigers. They do this for just about the whole movie. There is, of course, the perfunctory romance between Kaye and Ager, established at first with a sappy no-dialogue montage of them going on dates, the silence broken only by the music and her hilariously fake laugh at his foibles. The consummation of their love takes place in neck-deep water, probably not the place you'd wanna get it on if you're in an area plagued by shark problems. Two or three scenes later, we finally hear her say (in quite a different context) "Come on...come on...come on...oh my God...oh my God!" Wrong scene, honey. One scene has one character speaking with a noticeable amount of reverb, while the others don't. Despite being set in South Africa, the only black person in evidence is the mayor, and he sounds American. Dialogue all around is pretty questionable, like Steve Irwin complaining that he doesn't go in for "scientific mumbo-jumbo", or when Kaye, massively pissed because of the super-smorg in the surfing competition, viciously spits "What the fuck happened out there, Mr. Wonderful?" Kaye, like most everybody here, sounds like he's trying to cover up an accent; he says he grew up "off the coast of Florida", which could technically be anywhere, couldn't it? Even I live, quite some ways, off the coast of Florida. (turns out the actor grew up in Germany) Well, at least they didn't Mad Max/Hellraiser it and loop the dialogue with American voices (except for two kids, who sound like they've been looped by adults on helium). Standard hand pistols are used as ideal underwater weapons. The bomb they design as their ultimate weapon against the sharks is inexplicably designed without the capability to stop or re-start the countdown timer; I mean, c'mon, the only reason you'd design a bomb like this is if you don't want it disarmed, and what are the sharks gonna do, send in their bomb squad? Pop culture references are everywhere, demonstrating (further) that the United States does not suffer alone in its reliance on trendinesses. Crocodile Hunter, the Village People, the Discovery Channel, Crocodile Dundee, and one guy even does a not-bad Cartman imitation. Are you getting the picture yet? And yet, there's something about this movie. You can't say the title's a cheat, because there are a lot of shark attacks in this movie, with sharks chomping people left and right, sometimes two of 'em chomping the same guy at the same time! The effects might not be that hot, but director David Worth tries his best to make up for them with energy and gore. Shark Attack 2 has a sense of humor, though it doesn't really work outside of its visual gags. This waterpark is definitely playing up the sensationalism of having sharks on display as much as they can, with a model, bloodied shark's mouth kids can pose in for photographs, and selling blood-spattered T-shirts at a souvenir stand. Ah, that's what I love about the Discovery Channel - frequent reminders that animals aren't blood-thirsty carnage beasts, but they know nobody's gonna watch unless a zebra's getting torn apart. (my favorites are the shows about lions, and crocodiles. "Drink, little antelope! Drink!") Some call it hypocrisy, but I call it...the circle of life. Worst shark movie since Jaws: The Revenge? Well, maybe, like I said, I never did see Shark Attack 1, and I can't think of any others, other than Deep Blue Sea. So, yeah, bad movie buffs, see this one as soon as you can, two-fist it with Python. BACK TO THE S's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE