Main cast: Ian Ziering (Fin “Finley” Shepard), Tara Reid (April Wexler), John Heard (George), Cassie Scerbo (Nova Clarke), Jaason Simmons (Baz Hogan), Aubrey Peeples (Claudia), and Chuck Hittinger (Matt)
Director: Anthony C Ferrante
Of course I’ve heard of Sharknado, but for some reason I never managed to catch it, until now. It’s not like I was feeling a great loss inside for not having watched it, as most people who have seen it tell me it is either so bad that it’s good, or it’s just bad, period. That’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to Syfy films. When this movie unexpectedly showed up recently while I was randomly surfing channels on the local cable, though, I thought, hey why not. I end up feeling pretty underwhelmed by this thing.
The premise is pretty fun, though. There are tornadoes, of course, but these tornadoes suck up the sharks from the ocean, throwing them around the place, which means we get both destruction and people being eaten up by badly rendered CGI sharks. Seriously, these CGI sharks all look the same, suggesting that they are of the same species, but the proportions can change dramatically depending on plot convenience. They can be big enough to do the standard Jaws-ish knock-off scenes, but they can also be small enough to be able to swim past one’s front door, and even smaller when the movie needs a shark prop for someone to whack at and the budget people reminded the props department that they could only spend a hundred dollars or there would be no McDonald’s lunch for everyone that day.
Oh yes, the plot. When a sharknado hits LA, our team comprising ex-surfer Fin Shepard, his bartender Nova Clarke, and Fin’s BFF Baz Hogan head out to warn Fin’s ex-wife April and their daughter Claudia. April’s husband conveniently gets eaten by a shark to allow Fin to start something again with April, and the whole gang now have to collect Fin’s son Matt and then head out to safety. Along the way, things explode and people get eaten, the usual. There is nothing here that crosses the line to camp, in my opinion, and as a result, the whole thing is actually a boring kind of low-budget blah.
For example, it is very obvious when the background is just a still backdrop and the whole scene is filmed inside a studio. While the cast members seem to be having fun, it’s also very noticeable that they are only pretending to be interacting with things that are not really there. While the CGI on the whole is nowhere as bad as some other Syfy movies, it’s still pretty bad for the most part, making this one tad too cartoon-y to be taken seriously, but still not cartoon-y enough to make me laugh.
That’s the movie in a nutshell, though: it’s not good, but it’s nowhere as bad enough to become good in a perverse, ironic manner. For the most part, the movie just goes through some standard, formulaic disaster movie tropes, without much creativity or energy put into making things interesting. It is almost as if the people behind this movie expected the premise alone to carry it to the finish line, hmm.
At any rate, I have been trying to come up with a more humorous review for Sharknado, but yikes, in the end, I can’t. My attention tends to drift away while I am sitting through it, because it’s really quite the lackluster and formulaic Syfy swill once I go past the premise.
Still, I’m impressed by Ian Ziering’s new crown of hair. Did he get hair transplant, or is he just wearing a nice wig?
