Review: Piranha 3DD

Danielle Panabaker plays a marine biology student (The sea was angry that day, my friends!) who returns home to her dad’s water park to find that the horny old man (David Koechner) has turned it into a part water park, part strip-bar (!). He is also illegally pumping water into the park from an underground lake, which goes awry when the prehistoric piranha come from the lake and into the water park/strip joint and start attacking everybody! When Panabaker tries to warn him after a friend is attacked, Koechner doesn’t want to listen because the David Hasselhoff headlining opening is coming up. Christopher Lloyd again plays the resident scientist who seems even crazier than last time. Meanwhile, Ving Rhames’ deputy somehow survived the last film and now has guns for legs. Gary Busey and Clu Gulager play crazy rednecks in the opening scene, whilst Chris Zylka, Matt Bush and Katrina Bowden are the potential teen piranha fodder.

 

This is a bit of a tricky one. This 2012 film from director John Gulager (“Feast” and son of character actor Clu Gulager) probably isn’t a better film than its schlocky predecessor (or the Joe Dante original for that matter), but I think it’s just about as much fun. I’m not sure how one truly quantifies that in terms of a grade, but it probably measures up to somewhere around the same as the first film overall. For some oddball reason, the film is now known as “Piranha DD” on DVD and cable, instead of “Piranha 3DD”. Personally I don’t like either title, but if you’re gonna take the 3D part out of the title for non-3D showings, why not call it “Piranha 2DD”? That makes more sense to me, especially since it’s a sequel to “Piranha” (“Piranha 4DD” maybe?) and there would be a double meaning (Triple meaning, actually if you think about it). Oh, well, I’ll call it “3DD” anyway, it’s a lot less silly than just “DD”.

 

We open with a fun prologue featuring Oscar nominee Gary Busey as a dopey hick, and although his brain damage has ruined his acting ability somewhat, you can see a subtle difference between him here and the nutjob he appears to be on “The Celebrity Apprentice”. He either plays it up for reality TV, or is simply quite competent in short bursts. Still it’s very sad, as the man had genuine talent. Wear a helmet, kids. Meanwhile, David Koechner turns up as a shonky water park owner (the film is like a Spring Break parody of “Jaws”) and may just have found the right outlet for his sleazy redneck, Randy Quaid-like persona. He’s hilarious and maybe even sleazier than Jerry O’Connell in the previous film. That’s a helluva achievement given O’Connell was essentially playing Joe Francis. Koechner’s final scene is brilliantly juvenile. I knew I was going to have a good time with this within the opening ten minutes when you see Koechner’s strip bar/water park combo, and the requisite full-frontal nudity. Lovely. There’s nothing much here you didn’t get the last time except the sex has been downplayed a tad, there’s no Sapphic love (damn!), but the sleaze has been amped up. Yes, if you’ve seen one Spring Break film you’ve probably seen them all, but how can I possibly hate a film with so many pairs of boobs on display? Even moreso than the first film, this one knows it’s sleazy trash. The characters are mostly varying shades of amoral, for instance (Most hissable character in the film? The guy who says he doesn’t like big boobs. What the hell is wrong with you, son?).

 

Christopher Lloyd gets a laugh in his first scene talking about his YouTube hits. It’s a shame he and Busey are essentially reduced to Crazy Ralph roles, but at least with Lloyd you get the feeling he could play other roles if it was his wont. However, if Lloyd’s character is such an expert on piranha, how come he (and presumably the screenwriters) doesn’t know that the correct pluralisation of piranha is piranha? (Koechner is the only one, oddly enough, who gets it right) Still, he’s perfect. Less perfect, and perhaps surprisingly, is the normally lovely Danielle Panabaker. Not only does she look unflattering in digital cinematography, but her performance is surprisingly amateurish.

 

The film is probably more comedic than its predecessor, but that largely works in its favour. If you thought Jerry ‘My Penis is gone!’ O’Connell had it bad, this film has the funniest sex scene of all-time. How can you not like a film with the following line; ‘Josh cut off his penis because something came out of my vagina!’. Bravo. If that’s not the greatest line of dialogue in cinematic history, I ask you, what is? I also enjoyed the little tribute to the bathtub scene from “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. It’s not in your face, but if you’ve seen that film, you pick up on it and it’s cute. Meanwhile, The Hoff comes along to steal the entire show in the way that only The Hoff can. He’s a giant douchebag, but he kinda seems to know it, so you can’t hate the guy, ego or not. At one point he says ‘Welcome to rock bottom’. Ah, no, David. That was “Baywatch Nights”. I don’t know if The Hoff knows why he’s so funny in this, but he’s hilarious. I love that one of the projects The Hoff lists among his best-known work is “Anaconda 3”. Even I haven’t seen that one, and I watch a lot of crap. This film is easily the best use of David Hasselhoff since, well, “Baywatch”. There’s also  cute “Jaws” reference with the “Vertigo” camera pull/zoom shot.

 

Ving Rhames, who pretty much up and died in the last film to my memory, turns up briefly here, but he’s not nearly as much fun as The Hoff, and essentially steals Rose McGowan’s machine gun-leg deal from Robert Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror”. What the hell has happened to Rhames in the last decade? Has he stopped giving a crap? Does someone have some seriously incriminating pictures? Meanwhile, the CGI piranha look a tad less cartoony this time around, which is a plus in my book. They’re still not terribly convincing, but they wouldn’t be much fun if they were would they?

 

Look, this is the same film as last time, but it offers largely the same results, minus the lesbianism but with additional Hoff. Just see it, OK? The drop from the first film, if there is a drop at all, isn’t very much at all. With a screenplay by Marcus Dunstan, Patrick Melton (“Saw IV-VI”, “Feast”, “The Collector”), and producer Joel Soisson (“Dracula 2000”, several of the “Prophecy” sequels), it’s sleazy fun, even if the lead actresses are the only ones not nuding up. That pisses me off. However, the only genuine flaw in the film is that there is maybe one pair of bonafide DD breasts in the entire film, and they belong to a chick in a bikini, and then later she’s covered in blood so you can’t enjoy them then, either. Who buys themselves fake DD’s and doesn’t show them off in a film like this? **** SPOILER WARNING **** They make up for it, though, with an absolutely brilliant final moment that not only decapitates a kid, but sets up another sequel involving walking piranha! If they don’t make that film I’m gonna riot, y’all! **** END SPOILER ****

 

How can you not like this film, I ask you? There’s nothing new here folks, but if you enjoyed the previous film, there’s no reason you shouldn’t enjoy this one. It’s more of the same, only Hoff-tacular. 

 

Rating: B-