Review: Mega Python vs. Gatoroid

Troublesome animal activists led by Debbie Gibson (who is also some kind of snake specialist) release a bunch of lab tested snakes into the everglades. Tiffany is a local ranger who agrees to let the pythons be hunted down after they start killing off the locals gators, and her fiancé is killed by one of the snakes. The snakes, being lab rats...er...snakes grow to an immense size, however, and so Tiffany comes up with a genius (i.e. Ricockulous) plan to stop the threat to both humans and gators; Inject some chickens with a special steroid that never stops growing muscle and increases aggression, and then feed the chickens to the gators (Screw that, gimme giant chickens, damnit!). When Gibson finds out about this, she ain’t gonna be happy. But with two species of giant creatures around, I’m not sure anyone’s going to last long enough to hold a grudge. Kathryn Joosten plays Tiffany’s elderly deputy, Micky Dolenz of The Monkees has an inexplicable cameo as himself (an appearance that might have his fans seriously worried about him). A. Martinez plays a reptile expert from out of town who is in apoplexy over Tiffany not heeding his warnings about a whole slew of alligator eggs. Yeah, sorry buddy, but she doesn’t care, ‘coz she’s the beeyatch behind all this mess and the town’s got a big party planned that she will absolutely not cancel. I mean, how can she say no to Micky Dolenz?

 

I always knew I’d end up reviewing something like this. A 2011 creature feature from the SyFy Channel that pits 80s pop tarts Tiffany and Debbie Gibson against each other but also against a giant python and a giant alligator. The interesting thing is that both songstresses co-produced the film. The really interesting thing is that the director is Mary Lambert, who used to be a real director. Well, so long as you consider “Pet Sematary” and Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video to be credible works. Anyway, it’s a competently made film, but that’s the problem with all these flicks. Competent monster/creature flicks aren’t much fun. Look at “Anaconda” for instance. Competent but completely dull. Now “King Cobra” and “Python”, on the other hand are shit films...and hilarious. It’s mostly the CGI that bothers me in these modern ones, because you can have good CGI, good practical FX, and those are both acceptable. But bad CGI and bad practical FX? Well, at least bad practical FX can be fun. Bad CGI is better than bad practical FX on a technical level, but only serve to make you wish they had more money to get the good stuff, and thus tend to be boring. The moral? Don’t use CGI unless you can afford the good stuff, a moral that would’ve served this film a lot better. The pythons look crap in the water (?!) here, as you can tell there’s nothing beneath the surface, it’s just CGI on top of the presumably real water surface. But they aren’t crap FX in any enjoyable way. As for Gatoroid? No ma’am, that’s just Crocosaurus with a different name, don’t try to pull a fast one on me. Actually, that’s not fair, Gatoroid looks to have been rendered a bit better than Crocosaurus, though you still get the same idiotic camera-shaking when it moves to suggest it’s weight. Occasionally they appear to have a bit of weight to them (and not thanks to the camera shaking), but it’s inconsistent. The gators just aren’t in the film very much, either, but at least they’re not as bad as the snakes.

 

For all the bitching I’ve done thus far, and although still a seriously mediocre film, some of it is fun. A bit of fun, at least. The scenery is good (it almost always is in these films) and the film is overall well-shot under the circumstances by Troy Smith. It’s also surprisingly grisly for a film made for TV, with lots of severed limbs, severed heads, and an alarmingly high body count, but the CGI blood looks like Ribeena. Watching the two stars ham it up, though, is the main attraction here. Other than them, the characters are all lame small-town stereotypes, and aside from the likeable Kathryn Joosten, played by nobodies. Well, OK, A. Martinez is here too, but in addition to having a suspicious initial for a first name, this is the guy you call when Jimmy Smits, Benjamin Bratt, Edward James Olmos, Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo, and George Lopez are all busy. Tiffany, who looks like a trashy, dumpy, tattooed soccer mum is an awful actress. She’s pathetic and has absolutely no business being in the movie business. Her plan to thwart the snakes is interestingly loopy, pumping dead chickens full of steroids that are designed to never stop muscle growth. Hence, the gators eat the chickens and they get uber-big. Stupid, stupid idea, but hilarious. This woman that Tiffany plays is the sole cause of everything bad that happens in the film and gets my vote for worst human being in the entire world. Forget the sharks and gators, Tiffany plays the real monster in a film full of not very likeable humans. And for good measure, she sings an appalling bluegrass song over the end credits called ‘Serpentine’. Thanks for nothing, Tiffany (who was also the star of the much worse “Mega Piranha”). Admittedly Debbie Gibson is just as guilty in that department, singing a shithouse, auto-tuned dance-pop number over a time-lapse montage of animals getting bigger. Just sing ‘Electric Youth’, damnit. I love that song. Debbie’s actually the best thing here, and unlike Tiffany, she’s aged incredibly well. I’m not sure if she’s had any work done, but she looks great in a tank top and pink cut-off jeans. Gibson’s annoying but her one-note role is designed to be, and she plays the role well. Aside from her final scene, though, which is horribly unconvincing. She’s easily the most entertaining aspect of the film, she’s enjoyably bitchy. Fans of the 80s pop singers will enjoy their bitchy rivalry that culminates in a one-of-a-kind catfight, though there’s no way in real-life that Gibson would stand a chance against the heifer. Kudos for such dialogue gems as; ‘Only in your dreams!’, and the inevitable exchange ‘I think we’re alone now’ ‘There doesn’t seem to be anyone around’. You just knew that had to be there. The screenplay is by Naomi L. Selfman, who wrote the previous “Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus”, which starred the one and only Steve Urkel as an expert on shark sonar technologies. Or something like that.

 

Look, this is a pretty dull film, but you already know that when you look at the title and cast. It’s just up to you whether such an average film is worth sitting through just for the 80s nostalgia factor. For me, at times it kinda was...I guess, and let’s face it, no one working on the film thought this was going to be “Hamlet” anyway. But that doesn’t mean I can give it a good score.

 

Rating: C