 ***PLEASE NOTE: A Blu-ray 3D disc is only compatible with 3D Blu-ray players.*** Tagline: There's Something In The Water Tagline: A Campy Masterpiece of a Movie From director Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes) comes the new action thriller Piranha 3D. Every year the population of sleepy Lake Victoria explodes from 5,000 to 50,000 for Spring Break, a riot of sun and drunken fun. But this year, there's something more to worry about than hangovers and complaints from local old timers; a new type of terror is about to be cut loose on Lake Victoria. After a sudden underwater tremor sets free scores of the prehistoric man-eating fish, an unlikely group of strangers must band together to stop themselves from becoming fish food for the areas new razor-toothed residents. The film stars Jessica Szohr (Gossip Girl), Steven R. McQueen (The Vampire Diaries), Elisabeth Shue, Jerry O'Connell, Ving Rhames, Adam Scott, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd, and Kelly Brook. Storyline: Lake Victoria's annual Spring party by 50,000 young revelers is about to turn into a feeding frenzy with prehistoric hunger-pains. With knee-trembler's above the waves and tremors below, released from their dormant sleep, thousands upon thousands of flesh-eating nippers are released into the lake with whetted appetites and razor-sharp teeth. With a motley crew of strangers thrown together to defend these shores, it is now up to them to prevent the largest eat-out in human, and piranha, history. Written by Cinema_Fan Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, January 9, 2011 -- Dying to get wet. The wheel-of-remakes spins again, this time landing on Roger Corman's campy low-budget cult classic Piranha, and if there was ever a movie to target for a remake, this is it. It's not that the original was in any way bad -- it's actually quite good for what it is -- but there's plenty of room for excess and exploitation in an idea like this, and remaking smaller, less widely-known movies rather than going after the big boys of the world, like Psycho, seems the way to go if Hollywood's going to insist on eschewing originality for the foreseeable future. It's a win-win to redo a little nothing of a movie: it'll at least seem fresh to the casual moviegoer, and there won't be as vocal a crowd denouncing the project before it's even in theaters. No raped childhoods, no disregard for original intent, just a little harmless fun and a quick buck to be made, in this case by slathering the screen in perfectly-tanned and barely-clothed (and in some cases, nude) female bodies and spraying untold gallons of blood along the way for good measure. Indeed, this 2010 version of Piranha takes the old idea and milks it for all its worth and the MPAA will allow, the result a fun and cartoonish Horror movie that's not for anyone without an iron stomach. It was just supposed to be any other spring break at Lake Victoria. "Babes, boats, and bikinis" was and always had been the theme; no harm, no foul. Combined with beer guzzling, wet t-shirt contests, and any other number of traditional wild-child festivities, the area seemed primed for another influx of cash and, other than a few unruly drunken students, a relatively hassle-free week of sun and fun and booze and sex. And then the beer bottle happened. When a local fisherman (Richard Dreyfuss) accidentally loses his beer bottle to the depths of the lake, a chain reaction frees thousands of hungry piranha from a long-ago sealed off underwater home. They eat the fisherman and are drawn to the unassuming partiers, most of whom are about to look like they've just stepped off the set of the latest Hostel movie. Local police Sheriff Julie Forester (Elisabeth Shue, The Karate Kid) has charged her teenage son Jake (Steven R. McQueen) with taking care of his two young siblings while she's out keeping the peace, much to Jake's chagrin as he'd rather be mingling with the barely-clad out-of-towners. Jake pays off his brother and sister to stay home and out of trouble and finds himself working alongside a filmmaker (Jerry O'Connell, Stand By Me) who specializes in spring break sleaze. All parties quickly come under attack from the razor-teethed baddies, and families aren't the only thing that's apt to be torn apart by the time the piranha have had their fill of human flesh. Director Alexandre Aja's (Mirrors) Piranha indulges in several hackneyed Horror movie staples -- wild girls on spring break, characters as skimpy as the bikinis said girls wear, a weak plot, and enough gore to rival just about anything out there -- and is little more than depravity at 24 frames per second, but then again, that's the point. Piranha -- as vile as it may be -- sets out to gleefully entertain viewers who are mature enough to get the joke and play along. There's no secret as to what the movie is selling -- sex and violence -- and buyers of said wares definitely get their money's worth. When barely-dressed girls aren't dancing for the camera and getting their bra-less upper body sprayed down for a wet t-shirt contest or when big-bosomed hotties aren't swimming around naked, Piranha is tossing random body parts and half-eaten limbs, torsos, and heads around to such a grotesque extent that it becomes comical, the raw nastiness of the thing thankfully offset by an unmistakably playful nature. Even some of the special effects are laughably bad, adding to the charm, but it's clear that much of the budget went into making the gore look as realistic as possible. It's one wince-worthy shot here, one vomit-inducing kill there, making Piranha -- as intentionally humorous as it may be -- only for audiences with the strongest of stomachs. Be warned. So Piranha is all about selling sex and gore, and the movie eschews everything else that most movies strive to incorporate, like a meaningful plot and well-developed characters. None of that makes it into Piranha, and it's not like it would have resonated, anyway. Piranha is all about pushing the envelope, and in that regard it's a success. What loose structure there is may be necessary, but even the most basic storytelling elements only serve to get in the way of the good stuff, even if it's meant just to hold the movie together and give the audience a break from the mayhem. Still, it takes too long to get going -- the first act is short on violence and heavy on set-up and wild lakeside spring break partying -- but the second and third acts more than make up for the sluggish start. Unfortunately, the movie does fall into the trap of bothering with faux tension; one example sees a young girl cut her foot in the water, the scent of blood attracting the deadly piranhas. No matter how far the movie might be willing to go, it's never in question that it won't stoop to showing a child being eaten alive, so all of the tension is effectively canceled before it even has a chance to get going. Still, one can't fault Piranha for trying. It's a success for what it does, and even considering some early pacing issues, the movie clocks in at a neat and tidy 88 minutes, the perfect runtime for a quick and dirty little sojourn into the fantastically excessive world of Saw meets Girls Gone Wild. There's nothing fishy about this one. Piranha is a deviously fun little remake that's thematically vacuous and emotionally vacant, but it's hard to fault a movie with no class when it has so much fun being classless. Piranha is all about grossing out its audience and throwing in plenty of naked females along the way. It's a teenage boy's dream come true and a parent's worst nightmare. They don't get much more tasteless than this, but for audiences who want a dose of depravity without any of the guilt that comes with anything harder than this, well, Piranha's the ticket. Sony's Blu-ray 3D release of Piranha offers viewers a quality 3D experience, but at the expense of several extras. Fortunately, the documentary remains, but buyers will have to choose whether a few throwaway extras and the deleted scenes are worth the upgrade to 3D. Buyers of either release will enjoy the same high-powered lossless soundtrack. Recommended. User Comment: Mr Impossible (enedrulesyou@yahoo.com) from United States, 20 August 2010 • I thought this movie was going to be just AWFUL. However I was mistaken, it was actually pretty good. The acting, as I would've expected was mediocre, but no one in the cast was destined to shine in this film. I also had a good time watching the film, I was really happy how the Piranhas looked. Don't go in expecting a masterpiece like Citizen Kane or Schindler's List, cause you'll definitely be disappointed, but with a movie title like this, who would? Just go in expecting some laughter and have some fun with it. Also there's a lot of nudity and gore, so I don't advice parents to take your kids in theater to watch this film. Piranha 3-D lived up to its title, featuring Killer Piranhas with 3-D. It isn't in any way perfect, but then again, it doesn't need to be. Summary: The Best movie about Killer Piranhas ever made. IMDb Rating (04/10/13): 5.7/10 from 51,590 users IMDb Rating (05/11/11): 6.0/10 from 24,481 users
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