Review: The Meg

The inhabitants of an ocean lab off the coast of China find themselves dealing with a 90ft megalodon shark from previously unexplored depths of the ocean. A submersible ends up being attacked by the shark, and the only man capable of resolving the situation is former diver Jason Statham. His ex-wife Jess McNamee is among those in the submersible, giving the reluctant hero enough incentive to agree to the mission. Rainn Wilson plays the entirely obnoxious billionaire backing the lab, whilst the rest of our protagonists include father and daughter Winston Chao and Bingbing Li, Robert Taylor, Page Kennedy (practically screaming ‘We gon’ die!’ from moment one), Statham’s buddy Cliff Curtis, and a pouty Ruby Rose (struggling embarrassingly with an attempted American accent). Sophia Cai plays Bingbing Li’s daughter, who takes a shine to gruff Statham.

There will never be another “Jaws”, the film is practically flawless entertainment. There sure as shit are a hell of a lot of shark movies though, and most of them are either dreadful or blandly average. This 2018 Jon Turteltaub (“Cool Runnings”, “Last Vegas”, “Instinct”) prehistoric shark pic looked from its trailer and pre-release buzz to be aiming somewhere around “Snakes on a Plane” with a prehistoric shark, which might’ve been stupid fun. Based on a novel by Steve Alten, the film proves to be sadly one of the blandly average shark movies like “Deep Blue Sea” and “Shark Night”. In fact, instead of being another “Jaws” it’s a lot like “Deep Blue Sea”, but with a Toho Studios meets Jules Verne vibe…or at least a less interesting version of how that sounds.

Jason Statham is an immediately good choice for the lead, and young Sophia Cai damn well steals the whole film. Unfortunately, for a cheesy prehistoric shark movie this one moves way too slow, brings nothing new to the table, and the comedy stylings of creepy Rainn Wilson are aggravating in the extreme. He’s aggressively obnoxious in a role that probably should’ve gone to Oliver Platt or Sam Rockwell (who probably would’ve cost too much, I guess). Statham is in a light-hearted mood too, but he manages to get chuckles without being heavy-handed and irritating about it. The film ultimately needs to be taken seriously enough to have a sense of urgency, and I think Statham realises that, without taking things (or himself) too seriously. The Japanese do this sort of thing so much better, I think. The best this thing offers is one of the rare good ‘jump’ scares. It looks good and so do Jess McNamee and Bingbing Li (the former is wasted, but the latter gives the second-best performance behind Statham), but there’s not all that much going on here that you’ve not seen done before and better. Special mention goes out to Ruby Rose who yet again shows she can’t act. Or speak convincingly. Or emote. Or change facial expressions. Seriously, how does she continue to get acting work? She’s a barely active mannequin with an anime heroine visage. Also not covering himself in glory is Page Kennedy, playing a pretty horrid Stepin Fetchit/Mantan Moreland ‘scaredy cat African-American’ character that should’ve been eradicated from the screen at least 50 years ago. We’re still doing that shit? Really?

Although it was never going to touch “Jaws”, this had a chance to be fun on an Asia-Pacific kaiju level of cheesy fun. Unfortunately, the comedy is mostly aggressively obnoxious and the pacing deadly dull. Add to that a plot with no real freshness and this one’s pretty mediocre at the end of the day. The shark looks pretty good, but that’s providing the bare minimum requirement for this sort of thing, surely. The clichéd screenplay is by Dean Georgaris (John Woo’s flop “Paycheck”), and Erich & Jon Hoeber (“Battleship”, “RED”, “RED 2”).

Rating: C