Piranha 3D

(2010) ****

It’s Spring Break on Lake Victoria and Sheriff Julie Forester is making last minute preparations in anticipation of the 50,000 douche bags expected to flood into the quaint Arizona town. As the teens begin arriving she asks her 17-year old son to babysit his two younger siblings for the long weekend while she does cop stuff. What she does not count on is the coalescence of three events; (1) an underwater seismic shift has opened up an ancient cavern containing swarms of pre-historic cannibalistic piranhas; (2) Girls-Gone-Wild-Like porn producer (Jerry O’Connell) has hired her son to aid in location scouting for the new film he is crafting; and (3) her son had already committed himself to a hot date with a woman he never thought would go out with him. What this all means is that Sheriff’s 2 youngest children are left home alone and after ignoring all directions to stay put end up marooning themselves on a sandbar.



Why 4 stars, you ask? Piranha 3D is an homage to all those nature-run-amuck films we love so much and boy does it deliver the goods! I won’t dare spoil any of the nifty surprises this film has to offer but I will say things just get crazier than we have ever seen in this kind of film. How this managed to get an R rating is beyond me. Bare breasts (and more!) are shown on average of once every 2.5 minutes and piranha munching occurs almost as often (often these two amazing things are combined). At one point a victim of a piranha attack is pulled out of the water and he screams, “They ate my penis!” Now, I didn’t see this in 3D, but the very next shot is of his dismembered member floating towards the camera. A piranha swims up to it, swallows it, and then spits it out. Now we we’re treated to a mutilated dismembered member floating towards us, it’s just that kind of film, folks.



I thoroughly enjoyed Piranha 3D (in 2D). It’s obvious that director Alexandre Aja wanted to create a proper homage to these kinds of films, but with a budget and an excellent cast (expect a few surprise cameos as well). The carnage is near non-stop and with ample nudity bordering on a French “horror” movie, there’s enough here for everyone to enjoy. Director Aja ratchets all this stuff up to a whole new level of destruction with plenty of potential victims for the piranha to enjoy. My only (tiny) complaint is that the 2 children stranded on the sand dune are supposed to be 8 and 11 yet they speak to one another with the calculating sarcasm kids this age would never be able to achieve on their own. This is one of my biggest peeves in movies. Still, it’s a minor complaint. This is an instant classic. Expect to see a sequel.