Back in my day . . . great white sharks were the top of the food chain. Now, it’s Jason Statham!
Directed by: Jon (missing the H) Turtletaub
Written by: Dean Georgaris, Jon (aslo missing an H) Hoeber, Erich (found the H) Hoeber
Cast: Jason Shirtless, Bangbing Li, Rainn Wilson, Shuya Sophia Cai
Basically Jaws 3-D meets The Transporter. Nothing surprising, pretty entertaining, but sadly no real gore. That’s the problem with casting a shark whose mouth can’t fit on the frame, when he swallows someone, they are basically just swallowed whole. Where’s the agony, man? The wonderful wonderful falsetto screams that bid adieu to ladies of Spain and shit.
Anyway, Statham plays Jonas, a deep sea rescue diver who has been accused of being a coward. His cravenly act was saving the lives of eleven people. Not everyone was able to make it though, and some jerk-assed Doctor named Heller (Robert Taylor) blames Jonas for letting them die.
Thing is, Jonas was convinced there was “something out there” and everyone thinks fear tricked his mind into making him crazy, or some shit. So, he moves to Thailand to become a drunk who works on crappy boats and swears to never dive again. But then he hears his ex-wife is stuck at the bottom of the deepest pit in the ocean, and he’s all like, better go save her.
Wait, what? Guess his divorce was just peachy, as most are, right? So, that was strike one for me, totally unrealistic. Now, if you told me say Britney Spears or my lovely fiance was at the bottom of the ocean and needed saving, I’d say, let’s go! But the ex-wife? HARD PASS! In fact, just pass the Kraken Rum and belly up to the bar, boys!
If you have ever watched the Adult Swim re-imagined Sealab
The facility is staffed with an eclectic mix of colorful characters. There’s the facility’s director “eyebrows” and his daughter, Suyin who is played by Bingbong Li. Her English is not that great, but she makes up for it with her sex appeal. Since the ladies get plenty of shirtless Statham throughout, they had to toss us fellas a little bait too.
Suyin has an eight year old daughter, Meiying who is played by scene-stealer Sophia Cai. She’s pretty much the most adorable kid who also has probably the coolest playground on the planet. That’s the problem though, she can wander around this giant, state-of-the-art underwater facility with no adult supervision. But, at least she has a useless robot ball. Does Meiying make it out of the film unscathed? I a’int spoiling that tender morsel.
There’s other characters in the film, but honestly these few are the only ones that matter to the general audience.
So, rich guy Morris decides it’s a good idea to break apart some underwater ice shield that opens up a rift deeper than the Mariana’s Trench. It’s all freaking fantastic until they encounter some behemoth monsters that were only slightly smaller than a Russian hooker’s crabs.
Of course, unless you are a complete poser tosser, you know this means they released the Megalodon. For those that don’t know, the Megalodon was last encountered two million years ago by Urgle a made up guy I just made up, because no one was around two million years ago writing down their encounter with a Megalodon. But, here’s how I imagine it went down for Urgle. “Hot day, me go down water, me swim, me spear fish, me see fin big as cave, me swim gently, me…..arrrghyyyeeeeeeee”
So, The Meg is introduced to our world and basically just wants to survive and frolic away in the deep ocean. Then we come along and try to blow her up. Real nice, gang.
Here’s where The Meg
So, Statham and the gang upon first encountering the massive shark decide to fire a tracker into it. He has to, no shit, swim “gently” out to the thing within 100 feet and nail it with a dart. Not a scene later, and then he has to shoot it with poison that will kill it. Uhm, EXCUSE ME, why didn’t you fire a dart into it to kill it in the first place??
It’s shit like that that really makes me throw my hands up, much like The Meg does at one point making human soup. This is basically the only gore you’ll see in the whole PG-13 movie. Honestly, it could have gotten away with a PG, easily.
And our screening had this interesting bonus to it. The subtitles were all cut off, so we heard Chinese or Mandarin, or Korean, something not English, and what do smart asses like myself do in these circumstances? Duh, we mercilessly ruin the dramatic scenes with our own ever so clever dialog.
The Meg is a perfect movie to watch with your friends who just want to rip on a movie that takes itself way too seriously. But, as Madison pointed out, it will make for some really great parodies if it gets the right cult following.
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