Review: 'Piranha 3DD' doesn’t have many thrills or chills

Film: Piranha 3DD
Cast: Danielle Panabaker, Matt Bush, David Koechner, Chris Zylka, Katrina Bowden, Meagan Tandy
Director: John Gulager
Rating: ***

For a movie about deadly prehistoric, razor –toothed fish and a title that contains a reference to breasts, Piranha 3DD isn’t as wearisome as one would expect. As a horror movie it is mindful about its obligations to its fans and as a comedy, it seeks to milk the hahas in fulfilling them.

This time the horrors take place in the water park ‘Big Wet’ run by the sleazy Chet (Koechner). When his step-daughter Maddy (Panabaker) points out that something’s not right and the park must be shut down, he doesn’t heed her of course. Chet, as it appears, has an understanding with the law – represented by Maddy’s macho former police officer boyfriend Kyle (Zylka), who looks the other the way when its comes the park’s negligent management. Equally odious are Maddy’s sex-crazed friends Ashley (Tandy) and Shelby (Bowden), whom -the movie ensures - also gets what’s coming to them.

A follow-up to Alexandre Aja’s 2010 remake of cult B-film Piranha, the film doesn’t have many thrills or chills but what it does have is ludicrousness such as David Hasselhoff in an extensive caricature of his onscreen persona and characters such as the legless hydrophobic deputy Fallon (Ving Rhames) – a survivor from the first film who rises to the occasion by blasting the water with guns fitted into his prosthetic legs. He could afford them, he says, completely straight-faced, from the money he saved on socks.

Christopher Lloyd, back from the first film as crank/biologist Carl Goodman is great as always in that kind of role. Panabaker proves to be a pretty strong leading lady, worthy of the silent idolization of Bush’s character, a poolboy who must contend with Kyle for he affections.

Piranha 3DD, with its just-about convincing special effects and conventional story isn’t a must-watch for creature horror fans. But at 83 minutes, it is tolerable with its mostly hit-and-miss humour that isn’t above being very juvenile apart from the usual blackness. Those who get their kicks from watching the brutal deaths of beautiful young people and acts of random violence perpetrated on scores of less ‘deserving’ folks shouldn’t pass it up.