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Piranha 3DD

1 hour 23 minutes

Rated R (Sequences of Strong Bloody Horror Violence and Gore, Graphic Nudity, Sexual Content, Language and Some Drug Use)

Directed by John Gulager

Starring Danielle Panabaker, Matt Bush, David Koechner, Chris Zylka, Katrina Bowden, Gary Busey, Christopher Lloyd, and David Hasselhoff

1 out of 4 stars

IN THEATERS AND ON DEMAND NOW

Piranha 3DD is not trying to be an exploitative outrageous horror B-movie. It's just trying to be a comedy. Period. This is why it sucks so much. Yes I know that the first Piranha movie which came out two years ago was pretty funny too but it at least tried to be scary even though it was just plain ridiculous. It at least tried to be a movie! This sequel is an hour and 23 minutes long but the last 10-15 minutes of it are all bloopers in the end credits. Seriously!??? I watched this movie at midnight last night. By the time it finished it felt like only 10 minutes had passed. Characters aren't even introduced. They just appear and then disappear and then die and then that's it. Cute little Danielle Panabaker could have made for a lovely heroine. Instead the movie doesn't care about her at all. Remember the opening sequence in Piranha where Richard Dreyfuss (from Jaws, of course) is fishing and then gets attacked by the fish? That was clever. In this opening Gary Busey and a guy find a dead cow and then the cow farts piranha eggs and this all happens in what feels like 30 seconds. Dear John Gulager: what is the rush?!?!!?! Chill out!!

The trailer for the movie makes it look epic. Piranhas attacking a pool?!?! Hell yeah! I have been dying to see this movie for a long long time. Then it was announced that it wasn't gonna get a release date in the UK and would be shipped right to DVD. Uh oh. I thought to myself "Ok ok. So it's not gonna be as good as the first one but come on it can't be that bad. Just look at the trailer!" Well, I was wrong. There's only one scene that I really enjoyed in the movie. There's a girl (Katrina Bowden of 30 Rock, man is she hot) who goes skinny dipping with a guy (Jean-Luc Bilodeau) at night. A piranha swims up her vagina. The next day she feels nauseous. She feels like she's gonna die so she asks the guy to take her virginity incase she passes. They start doing it and then BOOM. The piranha swims out of her vagina and bites on the guy's penis. He freaks out as blood squirts all over her. She starts to convulse and vomits everywhere. He runs to the kitchen with a flappy piranha on his privates. He reaches for a knife and cuts it off. Of course, if there was a piranha in her wouldn't it be chomping away at her intestines? Well I didn't really worry about that. This scene reminded me of how much fun it is to make an outrageous B-movie. It's gross, ridiculous, bloody, and yes, hilarious and scary at the same time. It's every guy's worst nightmare: castration by piranha.

Unfortunately that scene isn't enough to save the unnecessary super-pacing of the movie. There's nothing clever about the sequel or even the death scenes. When there is a bloody death it doesn't try to shock really. It's just trying to be funny. In one scene a guy is decapitated and his severed head lands in between a topless woman's large breasts, ALL IN SLOW MOTION. Yes this is funny because it's outrageous but it's not even trying to be scary. This could have been an epic sequel. It has the potential to make the first Piranha movie look nowhere near as intense and gross and ridiculous. But it's not. It's just trying to spoof everything and have a good laugh. The big sequence at the end where the piranhas attack the pool (which is obviously the equivalent of when the piranhas attack the lake at the end of Piranha) is dull and lifeless. Its aim to be funny is a huge huge misfire. Why would they hire David Hasselhoff as himself anyway?