‘Piranha 3DD’ (if ‘DD’ stands for Depraved and Downright Misogynistic)

Up to this point, Ticket Stub Refund has been about fun (okay, vicious bitching) and the mocking of films generally of low quality but redeeming comedic value. In fact I’d suggest having watched the films under scrutiny at some point before, even watching them again before or after to re-familiarise yourself with the details. HOWEVER, today I offer a proviso that by providing you with this run through you DO NOT SEE PIRANHA 3DD!!! By God this film is a travesty, and not just for its dire script (desperately in need of an editor during writing), atrocious editing (same goes), bad direction (not helped by the script or editing), lack-lusted use of 3D[D], limp CG, and piss-poor excuse for characters, picked straight from the rosta of Eight Legged Freaks, only without the charm or self-referential 1950s B-movie admiration evident from the production crew. No, these things do not make a cinematic abomination – a bad film certainly (just look at anything Michael Bay has developed this decade), but not so bad that I’d advise avoiding it – ever for laughs. “Why?” you ask?, because it’s the most misogynistic, woman objectifying, sleaze piece of trash ever to be given a budget, and before you say “But what about the porno parody films that release alongside Blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean XXX, and This Ain’t the Smurfs XXX?”, it’s because at no point during those films did I feel uncomfortably like those involved hated women.

Piranha 3DD is utterly, abhorrently shameless about its treatment of female characters, reduced to faceless torsos and legs thanks to cropping shots that de-personify them into walking breasts and asses, whored out, talked down to by the male cast yet never rising up against or proving them wrong, showing them as ditzy morons, and for one particular character cruelly mocked for being physically sick and in pain, willingly debasing herself for a man she knows only wants her for her body, and made to endure painful humiliations (one with rape overtones played for laughs AGAINST HER and with the male being the figure of sympathy). I’m no raging feminist, but this film is such a step in the wrong direction towards entrenched equality of the sexes, in addition to being a poorly produced dreg unfit to use as fish bait.

You know why I think 2010’s Piranha 3D worked, it had a tongue-in-cheek understanding of what it was; goofy monster movie premise fun, with enough blood to drown a herd of elephants and some inventive gore effects that made the Feast Trilogy look reservedly tame, that happened to work wet tee-shirts and nudity INTO the plot BECAUSE it was a parody/tribute of what these genre films are renown for: inventively gory deaths, killer creatures, a plot devoid of any reality, and female flesh on display. And it was a hell of a film, capturing the tone perfectly to create a homage to B-movie horror of the 80’s, yet with that postmodernism self-mocking tone. 3DD lacks any of this, reeking of committee; a committee that evidently didn’t get the parodying tones and instead attributed the influx of earrings of its predecessor to it being a film about wet tits in 3D. This film is Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) bad, with a portrayal of women as odious as that of a white guy in a Spike Lee movie, and has encouraged plans for a video segment accompaniment to go along side this to fully delve into the problems on display, so look forward to that in the following weeks. Until then I promise to work in some jokes along the way, if only to lighten the potentially bitterly dark tone.

Part 1: I’d Rather go out with the Fish….*

*Before we begin, isn’t that the most moronically stupid line from X-Men First Class? Anyway, you certainly aren’t reading to hear indignant preaching about sexism in cinema, and I certainly didn’t fork out £10.50 (that otherwise could have been spent on a decent milk steak) to not rip the shit out of a film I hate. Our story begins at the end, specifically one year after the tragic event that took the lives of so many of the West Coasts’ brightest and most nubile teens when an outbreak of prehistoric piranha turned a spring break into a feeding frenzy. Having learnt what to do when a fish attack leaves half the vacationers eaten and the other half floating in bloodied chunks in the lake from what didn’t happen in Jaws, the resort has been closed off under quarantine. How cordoning off a shore line AND ONLY THE SHORE LINE will prevent the carnivorous shits swimming elsewhere in search of alternative food sources got second billing at the town planning meeting. The fish have not been seen since, and given these things are the size of cats and travel in larger packs than those Cosplay teens with the ‘Free Hugs’ signs at an anime expo, they are considered extinct once more.

The End

….but wait, what’s that strange creature swimming in that lake some miles away? Sweet Jesus, it’s hideous! What cruel twist of evolution could produce such a toothy monstrosity?

For some bizarre reason, Gary Busey guests as a farmer looking for his lost cattle in the most obvious of places: the heart of a lake. Finding the cow, Busey decides to light its farts to burn off the excess gas its omitting. Erm, ever heard of physics, because those gasses are the only thing keeping the 1300 pound cow carcass afloat if you want to drag it back to shore. He’s not given much time to ponder the scientific validity of his counter argument because the second flaming fart causes the entire corpse to explode, showering iddy-biddy piranha babies everywhere. We all know where this is going, so instead consider why Gary Busey was approached for such a trivial role – does it refer to some obscures in-joke about a previous role of his, or maybe they felt that to attract a more mature audience they had to showcase something other than wet boobs, and nothing draws the likes of Mark Kermode and Rodger Ebert faster than a film featuring Gary Busey. And since when did the piranha become the towns’ folk from The Village, living segregated from the world of man and content to live off the megre scraps isolation has to offer in self-imposed exile?

Piranha Carl: Oh my Neptune, our house! Our babies! That guy just blew the fuck out of everything we hold dear <:O

Piranha Sam: Bah, I knew Man could not be trusted. After the events in Arizona last year nearly cost us all our lives, we agreed to their terms; peace and anonymity on the grounds that we stay to the swamps and eat but one cow per year.

Piranha Carl: And you know how much we ate at spring break – how is one cow enough to sustain us? :’-(

Piranha Sam: They left us to scrape out an existence on nothing but rocks, then come here, invade our home and slaughter our food and children. What comes next is on them. TO WAR!!!

Really we have no one to blame but ourselves for the bloodbath that is to come. I certainly feel more sympathetic towards the veracious demon fish than the human cast, so from here on the piranha are to be depicted as the victims. You think I’m being a little quick to sail my own species down the river? Okay, then let’s look at the cast:

Maddy: A marine biology student who at no point in the film displays any indication that she knows anything about fish.

Chet: Maddy’s step father. A shady businessman who has turned his deceased wife’s swim resort into a place in to Sodom and Gomorrah, with strippers for lifeguards and guys who fuck the pool filtration pipes between spliffs. Christ, the pool must glow like the surface of the sun under UV lighting. I’d rather leave a baby in a bathtub full of paedophile spiders than risk it in the kiddie pool.

Barry: The pussy best friend with a secret, but far from subtle crush on Maddy. In short, a gutless fop.

Kyle: The corrupt cop who is every bit as evil as Joseph Stalin – if Stalin ate live puppies.

Shelby: Can’t even tell when she has a flesh eating fish renting a room in her vagina, and so lacking in self-esteem she is willing to debase her human rights for a man. I will be covering just how big a step back Shelby is for women’s rights as things progress.

Ashley: A ditzy Christian freak that practices in kinky pre-marital sex but guilt trips her boyfriend regardless, and who leaves him to die in a sinking van (we’ll get to that).

David Hasselhoff:…….ugh.

So yeah, if anyone sees the fish as villainous for doing what they have to, not because of anti-human malice, but BECAUSE ALL THINGS MUST EAT TO SURVIVE, just take a gander at the line up on the buffet above. And if you still think the fish are the bad, go stick your head in a bucket of lampreys.

Maddy is super pissed that Chet would pull such a stunt, which isn’t just morally backward but also simple bad business strategy. Sure, teens and 40 year old pocket masturbators will be there in droves, but I’m guessing that most water parks make the bulk of their profits through families and children; demographics that’ll be excluded by tailoring the park to vice. Besides most of the profits earned from the small horney demographics will be needed to buy acid strong enough to clean the sex and hoe-scank out of the water each day (every hour if they wanted to be even passively hygienic). We’re not to think too hard about this clearly, as the film then devotes whole  minutes to a montage of tits in slow-motion HD 3D – that’ll stop me having independent thought….IF I WAS STILL 14! Seriously though director-guy, the head-cropping camera angles do a wonderful job de-personify these women, to the point I wasn’t even aware I’d reduced them to meaningless objects of lust. THIS ISN’T THE 80S/90S ANY MORE, porn is much easier to find without having to jerk-off in the cinema – no matter how much you’re enjoying Avengers Assemble. Having sunk $100,000 into this venture, Chet isn’t going to back down 2 days before re-opening day. Maddy should be happy that he’s employed all of her friends to work there on the side. Evidently the water park is the only source of employment in the town, which raises more interesting questions about the local economy than anything these shallow 2D characters could raise.

That evening Shelby tries to seduce Douche, a guy she really likes despite him being more into Ashley. Not to be outdone by no God-bashing slut, Shelby suggests they go skinny dipping in a desperate bid to get him to fuck her. WHAT IS IT WITH THESE GUYS AND THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF SCIENCE!? Dead cows don’t float without gas, and it is impossible to maintain an erection in sub-zero water in the dead of night – the woman could be Kat Dennings quoting her favourite moments from Batman: The Animated Series and I wouldn’t even be able to retract my balls from my sternum, let alone get hard.

Although I’d be like to be proven wrong, Kat.

Well here’s a ‘gag’ you didn’t see coming when a sex-charged teen swims naked in a lake full of small fish in a film essentially called Piranha 3Tits; one of the blighters zips into her smooch with a comedic ‘zoop/ploop’ sound. Obvious humour aside, is it just me that finds the implied rape here a little uncomfortable? This woman has a carnivorous fish inside her, and judging by her reaction and the tone so far, it’ll be holding by shop for a while until the inevitable cock-biting scene that might as well have a fucking neon countdown in the top corner of the screen. Trust me, this disconnected treatment towards Shelby becomes disturbingly misogynistic from here out. Elsewhere, Ashley has handcuffed her lover to the inside of his van for some dirty-as-local-pool-water sexing. She inadvertently kicks the hand break and sends the van rolling into the lake. Unable to find the key to the cuffs, she decides to leave him to drown, leading me to ask “If you’re going to make such a big deal of her being devoutly Christian, why is she whoring out her best friend Shelby, engaging in the sexual acts one would expect of a dungeon master from A Game of Thrones, and leaving the man she seduced to die a horrific death caused by her hands?” Because The Crusades, that’s why. Luckily the guy won’t have to worry about the crushing coldness of oxygen starvation, as the piranha show up to see to satisfying their own starvation, with the good grace to eat Ashley while they’re at it. How’s that for divine comeuppance Ashley?

The next day the gang worry about the disappearance of Ashley after the van she was banging in is dredged out of the lake, and by ‘the gang’ I mean Shelby, whom despite acting as a surrogate mother to a devil fish, is the ONLY ONE OF THE GROUP to display any notion of concern towards their missing/presumed-dead friend. Beginning to see what I’m getting at here about the fish being more human than the humans? No one is aware the piranhas are back in town because they ate every scrap of the copulating couple, which is out character given the bulk of leftovers from their last summer vacation. Shelby announces she isn’t feeling well, a declaration backed up no end by her vomiting her spleen up. One of the teens, a grotesque blob that looks like the monstrous offspring of Danny Trejo and Pearl from Blade, mocks the Douche for what he assumes is getting her preggo and commiserates him for the terrors of impending fatherhood – completely ignoring the girl who just hocked up a lung, unless you don’t count jumping in the puke puddle and splashing her with it ignoring her. Wow, I don’t know if it’s the script, the direction or maybe bad choice editing of character developing scenes, but the film makers really seem to be taking things out on Shelby, the films only self-admitted virgin. So they portray the Christian as a selfish asshole and the sweet virgin as deserving of an oh-so-ironic fish pregnancy/rape that leaves her puking from pain? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THSES PEOPLE!?

Cooling off by the lake, Maddy comes to comfort Shelby, who is STILL more concerned about Ashley than the fact she is vomiting in public. Remember Maddy – me neither, which is never a good sign for a lead character (I guess they had to go with the forgettable back-up option seeing as Robert Downey Jr. had other commitments). Since we last saw her, we’ve learnt Maddy is potentially rekindling things with her ass-wad of an ex-boyfriend, now a cop who is abusing his power to extort Chet. I know women are supposedly into the whole ‘bad boy’ thing, but Kyle has no redeeming qualities; drinks and does drugs on duty AS A LAW ENFORCER, deprecating and openly manipulative of Maddy, corrupt, stupid, genuinely vile and overtly jealous of Barry, the asthmatic best friend that is crushing on Maddy – that’s like Aragon being afraid that Frodo may sleep with Arwen! Sheesh, a love triangle plot for the central female lead? That startlingly original idea is only about as common as a fucking credit roll! Piranha thankfully attack the dock before Shelby can undergo further subjugation from the producers, or Maddy can highlight how she’s worthy of multiple male admirers despite having no personality or memorable attributes.

Piranha Peter: C’mon girls, isn’t it better to die knowing you’re helping a thriving ecosystem than to die a horribly slow, sorta sexist death, or be subjugated to a by-the numbers Twilight rip-off sub-narrative?

Maddy: Never! Fuck nature!!! I may have indicated that I’m a marine biologist with a kind heart, but I’d rather smash your head in with a rock and allow Shelby here to die chest-burster style than feed a hungry animal.

Escaping to the shore, the girls manage to snare one of the gilled bastards and brain it with a rock, and I can only assume this was done because test audiences were uncomfortable with the original Islamic concept that Shelby was to be the one stoned to death, buuut they wanted to keep it in the script somehow so changed it to this.

Realising that these are the same piranha that reduced the populous of Arizona, Maddy, Barry and Kyle decide to undergo a little mystery solving to work out how they migrated out this far, like a retarded episode of Scooby Doo – with tits – and decide to track down the one man who may be able to explain what the blue fuck is going on, never giving a moment to think that MAYBE THE FISH SWAM THERE USING THE ABUNDENCE OF CONNECTING RIVERS.

Coming up in part 2: learn who this mysterious oracle of knowledge is. Behold the horrors as the piranha close in on the town. Recoil at the shady business practices of Chet. Discover how rape is apparently funnier when it’s happening to women. and of course, more boobs. COMING SOON

Part 2: That’s Not Pain You’re Feeling, it’s My Cock’s Awesomeness!

So the Scooby Gang drive all night to meet up with the people’s favourite creepy uncle, Christopher Lloyd *Fan Fare*, the pet store owner who just happens to be an expert on long extinct marine life thought to be myths. Personally, my favourite creepy uncle was Uncle Charles, who liked to keep china dolls he found in burnt out toy stores up in his attic after he removed their eyes.

Maddy: Excuse us, Mr Lloyd…?

Christopher Lloyd: I have a character name you know.

Maddy: Sure, you and Samuel L. Jackson. Listen, you’re an expert on those piranhasaurus’ right? Well, I think they’re back and eating my friends.

Christopher Lloyd: I certainly am, and I’m going to act like I don’t have teens with too much time on their hands always coming over EVERY DAMN DAY and saying the same thing, like I’m some crazy paranoid old fool. Do come in.

Kyle: Jessums crackers, you keep on in a lidless tank right in your house?!

Barry: Didn’t the final twist of the last move turn out to be that the piranhas we’d seen up to that point were just the babies? So why is this one still the same size a year on?

Christopher Lloyd: Look kid, do you want me to pull up the shortcomings of getting in new production teams for sequels, or do you want me to show you this thing head butt through Kevlar and eat a frog.

Kyle/Maddy: Frog! Frog! Frog! Frog!

Unable to let insanity reign supreme any further, Barry scoops out the frog at the last possible second, after spending minutes agonising over what the Frog Prince would do.

This scene would be made less retarded by the arrival of the Lemiwinks and co

His willingness to stick his hand in the tank after the piranha has finally broken through the metal sheet (PLOT POINT: the same metal used in common plumbing) impresses Maddy no end, and she is positively gushing for the boy after he revels he read Christopher’s book on marine biology to understand what she was studying (oddly though it was his book on the very same piranhas they are there to learn about, so why he couldn’t have enlightened them back home and saved them the trip is undetermined). The fact he knows the literature, is a fan of the goddamn author and is willing to save an aquatic life form means he is more qualified to be a marine biologist after one scene than she is after 2 years of university and an entire fracking movie about fish to showcase her knowledge. The film reveals its secret message now as a critiquing of the American educational system, in which underfunded schooling institutions are leaving students under equipped for the employment sector. Pffft, I’m fucking with ‘ya, she’s just a badly developed character, just one of the many insufferable charms this film has to offer. So that expensive cameo and 10 min of *smirk* character development between Maddy and Barry was all to tell us that the piranha can chew through cheap plumbing. Hardly Christopher Nolan worthy feats of suspence, but at least we got to see Christopher Lloyd in a role that allows one to maintain bladder control.

Wow, the piranha can enter a drain system…you know if they wanted to – the same way a velociraptor can open a door if the material is handled by someone who knows nothing about dinosaurs. The sulphurous smell of the pool cleaning chlorine is an aphrodisiac to these critters, as it reminds them of the sulphurous caverns of their forefathers. Ah yes, happy times growing up in a world devoid of light, stinking like the devil ate a load of sprouts and farted in an omelette, and filled with cannibalistic swimming knives with teeth – what sort of kill-joy individual wouldn’t want to chew through steel and squeeze through miles of pipe filled with poisonous foul smelling chemicals to relive those salad days? Suddenly the thought of an all stripper-run water park for drunken frat boys seems like a lawsuit in the making, and Maddy makes haste to warn Chet not to open the park tomorrow.

So while the plot is happening elsewhere I notice Shelby hasn’t been in chronic discomfort and subjugated to humiliating deformation for some minutes now. Oh wait, yep there it is, I see it. See with Ashley dead and Maddy hanging time with Doc Brown, there is no female voice to ensure that Shelby doesn’t simply fall back into her default pre-Suffragette mode. Her fever, admittedly an odd choice of symptom when having your vaginal tract eaten from the inside, is getting worse and she fears the end may be neigh. So like any self-respecting woman, she insists that she does not die without being used as a spunk bucket by Douche.

Shelby (AND I QUOTE): [Tearfully, voice breaking] “I know you don’t love me, but I’m really scared, and if anything happens I don’t want to die a virgin. Make love to me, please. Cum inside me. Just cum inside me and I’ll do anything you want after that.” [Damn, where were all these randy piranha infested chicks when I was an adolescent?]

Douche: Oh. My. God. It may be the rapefish talking but who gives a fuck, and if Electric Six say infected girls do it better then that’s good enough for me. Dreams do come true 😀

If only Douche. If only….

Countdown to unpleasantness in 3…2…1…

Shelby’s pleasured moans turn to groans of pain as her stomach bulges (….THE FUCK IT IS WITH THIS GIRL AND FLAUNTING THE PRINCIPALS OF NATURE?! She can maintain a guy’s erection in ice water and apparently her vagina extends all the way to her lungs?), and she passes out in a pool of barf – Douche is too preoccupied to notice she is screaming bloody murder and caked in more stomach acid and carrot chunks than Mr Creosote at an all you can eat buffet – unless he’s got some seriously messed up fetish that makes him carry on regardless. To him this is akin to Natalie Portman’s striptease from Closer.

Countdown to the obvious in 3…2…1…

Meanwhile, inside Shelby’s vagina:

Artemus T. Piranha: You know, originally I was sceptical about investing in property in a shoreline area with a failing town economy, and located inside the vagina of a young teen, but now I’ve had a chance to settle in, get some decoration done, get ‘ma fung shway mojo on, I gotta admit you made the right choice Artemus. You did really good. And so roomy too……HOLY SHIT something’s smashing through my front door. AAHHHHHH GIANT ONE EYED SNAKE MONSTER! KILL IT! KILL IT!!!!

For those to disinterested to have predicted how this would go down, Douche withdraws to discover the most effective form of birth control holdfast to his manhood (although the ‘hood’ part has been long since entered Artemus’ digestive tract – foreskin if that was too subtle).

Q. What is the most effective, minimal risk means of removing a piranha from the end of a penis?

A. Gentle cohesion

B. Prizing it off with your hands when it dies of rapid oxygen depravation

C. Call it a homosexual

D. Cut off the whole penis with a knife

Notice the specifics of option ‘D’ states whole penis, not the tip ‘nore the thing biting it: THE WHOLE PENIS. Well if you’re that unattached to it mate then why even bother getting upset about it disappearing down the gullet of a hungry fish? All said and done, Shelby wakes up feeling refreshed and not in the slightest hurt from her ordeal. Were these two shots scripted by writers working from different broom closets? C’mon, she doesn’t even seem to be aware of her DESTROYED genitalia, or at the very least embarrassed at how her first time went – rumours like that spread faster than fin rot, especially ones so ripe for quips like “She was a total cold fish” or “She flopped around as hopelessly as a fish out of water” – hey don’t judge me, teens can be cruel. Blissfully unaware of her trashed room, severed bell ends and more blood decorating her flat than a Clive Barker film set, Shelby stumbles on until Douche confronts her with a knife.

Shelby: Soooo….how was it for you?

Douche [AND I QUOTE]: Look what YOU did to ME!

Did he think maybe she was using piranha as a (granted effective) form of birth control? He is a tad upset about how quickly this situation turned sour, and frankly most would think that herpes would be the worst that could come from such good fate, but don’t bother to show any concern or offer words of comfort to the girl to the woman with a flesh mutilating monster feasting off her undercarriage the last 2 days – oh wait, you’re not. Jerk. It’s moments like this that make me seriously wonder do the filmmakers hate women, because this scene plays like ‘The Witch Hunter General’ more than a cheesy horror film with softcore fanservice.

Kyle takes a slight detour after ditching the rest of the Scooby Gang to give Chet a warning that his “shady business operations” are only going unobserved because Kyle is happy to keep his mouth shut for the bribes. The corrupt cop and bent businessman angle, jeez with stellar plot innovations such as that it’s amazing the script writers weren’t contracted for an Inception sequel. Quite what the ‘dubious’ ploy of Chet’s is unknown, but given the ‘all men are bastards who want to hurt you’ vibe to this film, who wants to wager he’s working for the piranhas as a sleeper agent?

Pointless movie twists, in association with M. Night Shyamalan. Ruining straight narratives since 1999

The Scooby gang return to find Shelby in the hospital, although their instinct to warn Chet not to open the water park takes president over the urge to hurl at the grizzly details.

Maddy: Hey Shel-shel. How are you feeling?

Shelby: Oh I’m fine, just had a baby piranha snacking on my cooch, and it bit the cock off a guy who then tried to stab me. Oh dear, but that’s enough of my mindless prattling, how have you been? I baked you some cookies, but I must warn you that I was woozy from blood loss so they might not be perfect. GOD I’M THE WORST KIND OF PERSON! [I’m sorry, are they living in Wicker City or is Shelby based entirely on the female cast of Code Geass?! (obscure anime references – look it up!)]

Maddy: With your vaginal tract now resembling well chewed minced beef, it is clear what must be done.

Barry: Be here for our dear friend in her time of need?

Maddy: Fuck no. Ensure the water park does not open tomorrow in the slim probability that the same thing could happen to others – strangers, whom we have no emotional ties with, yet are sworn by duty as protagonists to protect!

Barry: To the Friendship Mobile!

Shelby: Uh, visiting hours are open for another 20 minutes….Guys….guys…?

In the concluding segment: Shit hits the fan as the guts hit the pool filters. Bad CGI and shoddy, forced 3D-effects. Assholes, tits and twats (I’m referring to the characters, but there are plentiful assholes, tits and twats on display to distract). And how David Hasselhoff’s appearance suggests this film is a sequel to SpongeBob SquarePants: The Movie.  COMING SOON

Part 3: The Furthering Perils of Shouty McKnows Nothing About Marine Biology & Chums

So by now it’s like an hour in and I’m having to stab myself in the leg with a shard of un-popped popcorn to take the focus off the (terrible post-conversion) 3D induced headache. Unfortunately neither a bleeding thigh nor eroding corneas are distraction enough from my principle griped at this cinematic nightmare; Did I misread the title as Piranha 3DD at the ticket desk instead of its actual moniker Boring People Do Nothing of Interest in a Story Loosely Concerning Unconvincing CG Fish 3DD? C’mon, know your audience. This led me to sneak a glance at my fellow patrons, discovering it split into two distinct camps: those who came to see women getting wet and topless, and those who paid a sizable amount because….well because of this:

– Piranha 2: The Spawning (or Flying Killers in the UK), perhaps the fastest case of a franchise jumping the shark and making  the world a better place for it, courtesy of FORMER sci-fi aficionado James ‘Don’t Call Me Terminator/Aliens/The Abyss/Terminator 2 Any More’ Cameron (a shower of Oscars and the 2 most baffling top earning films in the world and yet still this shadow can’t be shaken, eh mister “I’m too fucking self-important to make Battle Angle Alita these days”?). As someone who willingly takes time to contribute to the ever growing half of the internet concerning angry nostalgia critics making references so dated it’s surprising not to see them on the Jimmy Kimmel show (the other half  being pornography, which draws an interesting parallel between this movie and the internet. Tagline: ‘If you love this internet, you’ll…not hate Piranha 3DD…maybe.’) My point is that I’m here not because I want boobs slapped in my face…….*ahem*, I came because I honestly wanted, desired something as amazing as the following clip done with modern effects:

Who doesn’t want to see PIRANHA WITH WINGS THAT CAN FLY rendered with good CG swarming a small beach resort en masse?! Instead we get a soft core porno with a marine life flavour (insert joke here). Even the title make it sound more like a high-end adult parody that a sequel. I’m an adult, and as such I can see naked women a variety of different ways (aided no end by a stolen credit card and a brothel operating in the local area), but this is the one time I can see a gaddamn bird fish, so howsabout throwing me a fucking bone?!

Back to the story: Raaagh, this film is as painfully irritating as someone coating a black board with paint made from fingernails, and as tedious as watching it dry. What we really need is a shot in the arm to wake us up ready for the big bikini, boob and blood fest promised by Chet since his introduction 5 minutes in. But what could stir me from slumber AND shake off the rage at having handed over good dole money for this garbage? “Gee sceptical cinema-goer, how does DAVID HASSELHOFF AT A KEYBOARD SINGING ABOUT HOW AWSESOME HE IS AT LIFE AND SEXING A WOMAN sound?” Yeah, that’ll do it. Well played Mr Gulager 😀

Maddy approaches Chet in a last ditch effort to make him drop the grand opening.

Chet: I said ‘no’ the first 100 times, and that was before I had 1000 people lined up at the gates and the celebrity talent booked. Why the blue fuck would your paranoia get through to me now?

Maddy: Because you can see all those people out there who are in danger. Chet please, these people deserve to live.

Unseen Queuer #1: Let us in the fucking park you gaylord asstard cock suckers!

Unseen Queuer #2: Yeah, I want to get my freak on with those crazy strippers in your sex party pool!

Unseen Russian Whore Lifeguard: And I vill be happy to take you to sex in my mouth over by the kiddie pool.

Maddy: I’m here to represent the silent majority, like those families and children who are inexplicably welcomed to this seedy pool-side strip club.

Chet: Forget it.

Maddy: Fine, then at least tell me what this pump/drill thingy-ma-bobby hidden around the corner is.

Chet: Ha, you’re going to love this. I been drilling an underground well that’ll let me tap all the free water I want without paying a dime in bills to the water companies. Not liking ‘dem apples, well your lover-boy Kyle’s been keeping the law off my ass for bribes, so you get two betrayals for the price of one.

Maddy: How could you!? To me, a believer in the sanctity of water being free in the wild, this is worse than if the park were running off the blood of kittens killed in front of their mother, whose names you personally carved into her side as a constant reminder of her loss.

Chet: Yeah, I’m a real monster, and it gets worse; because I’m pumping in water straight from the underground cavers that the piranha ALREADY LIVE IN, there was no need for the plot to factor in the whole ‘fish chewing their way into the plumbing systems’ angle to gain entry to the park – I can pump them straight in! You just wasted a shit ton of gas going to see Doc Brown for no reason, muhahahahaha!

Maddy: So all this time the script writers were working with Chet and Kyle to lead me astray. I don’t know what’s worse, that you and Kyle betrayed me, or that the scripting team sold out what could have been a goofy but fun sequel/franchise for a quick buck.

Hasselhoff arrives and the park opens as the smell of the sulphur and sounds of happy innocent kids watching dudes get blown by life guards – who’s CVs I’d certainly trust the validity of – draws the kill fish closer.

Piranha Garry: I – personally – I cannot wait to check out this bitching water park. It’s been, like, the hype of the county since Christmas.

Piranha Steve: Ditto my friend. Are you sure you up to it after that nasty cough you’ve only just shaken?

Piranha Garry: I’ll be fine, but thank you so much for asking. You truly are a good fish to ask about the health of an ill friend.

*Elsewhere* Maddy: SHIT, I forgot Shelby died of her wounds yesterday! Should I send a card? I should probably send a card – after my thing’s out the way.

Piranha Jerry: Now you remember the rules right – no killing, only a few nips then move onto the next person if you get hungry. We don’t want a repeat of the last time, which was a PR nightmare.

Piranha Garry/Steve: We promise 😀

Piranha Jerry: I love you guys. Now let’s go show there are no hard feelings about that hiccup in Arizona.

A small band of piranha swim up Chet’s pipeline (insert another joke here), and I mean small – the last film had thousands of the buggers, but there are no more than 10 from here out, so either the bloodbath has been Fox News overhyped, or the budget for the piranha in a film titled Piranha 3DD was spent almost entirely on the DD’s. True to their word, the blighters only nip and pinch before moving on. The whores in the pool are a bigger health risk through bacterial contamination than the fucking chainsaw fish. Yet still Maddy runs around like a maniac screaming like Charlton Heston in Soylent Green about the horror they have immersed themselves in, and no one commands more respectful attention and obedience than a teenage girl in a fit of hysteria. The swimmers are content to be eaten rather than go along with Crazy McShouts Bikini. Oh and another thing, if she didn’t want the park to open and was afraid that just being in the same time zone as water could lead to savage mauling, then why the crap is she in her swim wear!? A little consistency between motivations and actions would be nice. Around about Maddy’s third lap of the park screaming as if she were on fire, people begin to take note of the chunks missing from their flabby buttocks and a stampeding mass panic ensues.

Hasselhoff: *Sigh* I am getting practically zero screen time here. Hey kid, c’mover here an let me quote my IMDB page at you.

Kid: But Mister SpongeBob Cameo I’m too young to understand, I gotst bitted by a piwana.

Hasselhoff: Great Scott, are the piranha killing everybody in the water?

Kid: Well…no, it’s really stwange becuz the piwana are sorta swimming awound not doing much, but everyone is panicking and killing one another in a stampede.

Hasselhoff: Of course, the deadliest killer all along….WAS MAN!

Oh cruel irony, the people are killing one another in a murderous attempt to flee the uncharacteristically docile piranha – it’s as if they are acting like naturally placid real life piranha, rather than the genocide-with-fins misconception most commonly associate with them. As hilarious as it is baffling, despite the fact there are so few piranha, which don’t seem harmful let alone lethal, the swimmers can STILL be found thrashing around like caged rats at a rave 15 min after the ‘bloodbath’ begins, in pools that even a wheelchair-bound sloth could escape from, with nothing said of those capable bodied individuals suffering several small bites. WHO WAITS IN A POOL OF WATER NO DEEPER THAN THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OF THIS MOVIE SCREAMING WHILE FISH TAKE PERIODIC BITES FROM THEIR FEET? Just get the fuck out the water you moronic dick balls!

Kid: Mister, maybe they’ll get out of the water if you, a washed up second rate celebrity, tell them to. After all, American’s will only do and think what celebrities tell them to.

As Hasselhoff tries and fails to haul his geriatric ass out his chair designed for a much younger, slimmer lifeguard, Maddy and Barry (you know, Barry, the indispensible love interest. No not the buff cop, the scrawny one who knows more about marine biology than the marine biologist. Still nothing huh? Maddy really has no luck with men) form a plan: Barry drains the pools and she’ll help the people in the pool. Now as plans go, there is nothing wrong with it – in principal. However this goes against everything she stands for. For one it’ll mean suffocating animals doing nothing but obeying their nature, rather than simply getting the people out and calling animal control to humanly deal with the piranhas. Second, emptying the chlorine infested water into a fresh water source – is she mental?! This’ll fuck the ecosystem, and she’s meant to be a marine biologist (despite lack of knowledge on anything like ecosystems or fish). Third, it’s the sulphurous pool chemicals attracting the piranha – WE ESTABLISHED THAT EARLIER. Again, draining into the local water source will attract the piranha in their THOUSANDS, where they will breed and eat and eat and breed, totally demolishing the local wildlife and threatening the safety of the people living around the area indefinitely. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? Lastly, and this may sound a bit sexist but allow me to justify myself: she is doing the heavy lifting of people out the pool, while Barry just needs to pull the lever. Aside from it being more chivalrous for the guy to traditionally be in charge of manual labour, Maddy knows where the pumps are and, most vitally, KNOWS HOW TO WORK THEM saving a lot of time explaining what Barry has to do to get them working. From a story telling angle, her choice allows Maddy to be the strong capable heroine (because so far she has shown little to no compassion or humanity towards anyone, so a few token gestures now would be good for the audience), but this is just ass-backwards in terms of how normal people would react to this situation.

I feel we are forgetting someone…can this film actually have so few characters yet they all be unmemorable? Evidently so. Wait, it’s Chet, the sneaky business practitioner who refused to keep the park closed for one extra day, thus dooming him to a life in prison. Did I say prison, I meant HELL. While making a desperate escape from the water dwelling terrors while on land and nowhere near the pool (the fuck!?), Chet runs over a little girl (actually hilarious), is decapitated by a quizzically low suspended banner rope, and given a bloody tit slapping by a startled stripper to make sure to goes to damnation smiling. On the topic of forgettable characters, Kyle is having a freak out and refuses to help Maddy out of a pool as it drains, leaving her to the mercy of ONE LONE, SOUL, SINGLE, ISOLATED, SOLITARY piranha – I hope she can escape before she gets a few shallow bites FFS. She is knocked unconscious, to give the disinterested piranha pause for thought about eating her, seeing as piranha are scavenges and only eat dead or wounded prey. OF ALL THE OTHER THINGS LOGICAL THIS FILM IGNORES, WHY IN POSSIDEN’S NAME IS THE NATURE OF PIRANHA THE ONLY ABIDING THE FACTS OF REALITY???? I WANT THEM TO GROW WINGS AND DEVOUR A COW IN SECONDS, NOT IDLY NIP AT THE DEAD!!!! Why can’t the people act like people and the monsters act like monsters -how did the two get their roles switched?! Her fat sleeping ass that is totally not suffocating despite being submerged in liquid is blocking the drain, so the water won’t fuck off and the pumps break down. Barry is forced to save her the moment the piranha looks like it might be about to do something fucking interesting. The water drains and the piranha suffocate.

Piranha Steve: *Gasping* Garry….? Ga-Garry….? Where are you? So…..cold…..

Piranha Jerry: *Gasping* He’s dead….Steve. He’s…dead. Oh God *sobs uncontrollably*.

Piranha Steve: Jerry…I love…I love you. I…I love yu…..

…..

Well, I certainly feel ashamed to call myself a member of the human race now. Congrats, you slaughtered the last remnants of an endangered species to protect a few drugged-up frat boys, strippers, and families who’d bring their kids to a place with drugged-up frat boys and strippers. Kyle tries to look the noble hero by saving a corpse but dies as a blast of water pressure throws a trident in his face.

Okay, that’s full of win \o/ So I guess it’s a happy ending after all; Maddy’s lost her best friends, her step father sunk all her inheritance on this lawsuit timebomb, she’s lost the option of sleeping with beefcake Kyle and has to settle for wimpy runner-up Barry, her mother’s water park legacy is in tatters, she’s betrayed the code of marine biologists, failed as a trained lifeguard, didn’t get Christopher Lloyd’s or Hasselhoff’s autograph, and genocided a species all in the space of 88min. And worst of all, THE PIRANHA NEVER FLEW! Suddenly Anastasia’s Rasputin (there must be a more memorable Chris Lloyd role to ref here, but fuck it, ‘In the Dark of the Night’ is such a good song it’s worth the sell) phones despite never having got any of their phone numbers to warn that shit has been going down at his place….

Uncle Fester: Maddy, I have to warn you!

Maddy: About what?

Doc Brown: I’m an expert in prehistoric marine life and we’ve only ever talked about one thing – it’s hardly about the dangers smoking. Listen, those piranha, the ones that spent millions of years closed off from the world and evolving into the perfect killer – well they’re evolvinger!

Me: Just like that? After one year nature has decided to throw them the X-Man gene? Hold the phone, does he mean….?

Me: I take it all back Markus Gulager, I will suck your dick now 😀

Judge Doom: That’s right; they’ve evolved the ability to………..WALK!

Me:……..GODDAMN IT! I will never dare to hope to dream of the thought of being optimistic about anything EVER AGAIN.

So the mongoloid mudskipper-come-piranha hauls its ass onto the pool side, barely beating Hasselhoff, and proving it’s more threatening than it’s asthma suggests by decapitating the Kid from earlier – making it immediately more lethal than General Grievous from Revenge of the Sith.

The End