Bad Movie Review: Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (2009)
Starring:
Deborah Gibson
Lorenzo Lamas
Sean Lawlor
Vic Chao
Dir: Jack Perez (as Ace Hannah)
Look out! It’s viral internet movie trailer sensation cum so bad it’s good movie – the battle we’ve all (apparently) been waiting for – “Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus”!
I had high hopes for “Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus” based solely on its trailer. Fanboy excitement for a gloriously bad trailer hadn’t hit such highs since “Snakes on a Plane”, the difference being that “Mega Shark” had no budget and no stars (despite Keenan from Keenan and Kel only being a phonecall away).
No stars that is, unless you consider 80s teen poplet Debbie Gibson a star. Her lead in this movie is brilliant – her acting is wooden and she delivers lines and inflects her sentences without consideration of the meaning of the words she’s using. I hope that this isn’t her last bad movie. She was thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.
The script, as can be expected, is dreadful. My favourite part of the screenplay isn’t when they’re delivering cheeky winks at other movies (“Ice wall dead ahead!”), it comes when Gibson and co. are discussing the Mega Shark (or Megalodon). It’s mentioned that it was “the apex predator of its time and is the largest carnivorous fish known to have existed”. I went to check their facts in the only way I know how, only to discover that that particular line of dialogue had been lifted directly from Wikipedia!
The set piece that gave the movie its infamy before its release involves a plane in flight becoming shark fodder. During some turbulence on the flight, a passenger stands up only to be told to sit down by the hostess – “But I get married in two days!” comes his reply. Oh, well we better make the plane fly faster then to make sure you’re not late!
One of the themes of the movie is to superimpose the name of every location on every establishing shot of every scene. This is taken to a whole new, ridiculous extreme when the name of the location is superimposed between scenes despite the location remaining the same.
Debbie Gibson is brilliant in this movie. I can’t help but wonder what it is that makes her performance so atrociously delightful. But then it strikes me. She has more in common with Paula Abdul than their careers being at their peaks in the 1980s. If you’ve ever seen Abdul on ‘American Idol’ you will have noticed a faraway look in her eyes and a paralysed face. Gibson, without the botox-induced palsy, has the same hundred-yard stare. Maybe they both have post-traumatic stress disorder from their 1980s pop careers – “You weren’t there man”. Or maybe she was just loaded on the set.
While the Mega Shark attacks San Francisco, we learn that the Giant Octopus has more or less destroyed Tokyo. The best part of this fact is that we don’t see any of the titanic cephalopod’s destruction, we just get told that it happens, so believe me, it happened ok, no you can’t see it. What do you think this is, some sort of disaster movie?
Lorenzo Lamas is a bad acting God. If this movie was his showreel, he’d get hired for every bad movie being made. With his tiny ponytail tied into a bun, he’s like an Hispanic Steven Seagal. The only difference between the two being that rumours of Lamas’ death would be met with “Who?”.
This is a brilliant bad movie. Locations are re-used (an American boat bridge becomes a Japanese submarine bridge), the acting is so hammy and camp, and best of all it’s had a butt-load of publicity.
I’ve been so excited about seeing this movie since hearing of its existence. It’s a film where the name clearly came before the script – it was only ever going to fall into the category of “so bad it’s good”. But I’ve also been excited by the amount of publicity it’s had before its release. Hopefully this film will create a whole new audience for bad movies. It’s the gateway drug to the hard, street crack of real celluloid stinkers.
It’s a great bad movie. The screenplay can take a lot of credit for that, but the direction, jump cuts and heroically ridiculous acting from Gibson and Lamas are the tasty flesh on the screenplay’s bones.
The trailer promised a lot, but “Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus” meets and exceeds all bad movie expectations.
There is a perfectly good reason why we don’t see the Giant Octopus destroy much in this movie… That reason being that watching tentacles flailing about isn’t as awesome as seeing a Mega Shark jump out of the water and eat a plane or eat the Golden Gate Bridge.
Awesome job for pointing out that they used location names like it was just invented or something. Me and my brother noticed that as well. I especially love when they showed the Golden Gate Bridge and then told us it was the San Francisco Bay. Gee, Thanks!!
Bobby – I gotta admit it was pretty awesome to see a huge tentacle come out of the water and destroy a fighter jet. So perphaps more tentacle flailing scenes could be as awesome as a shark eating a airplane.
But what would really make this movie that much more ridiculous is if a Giant Dinosaur just appeared and started in the fighting. I can only hope they’re saving that for the sequel.
Coming soon to a DVD near you…
Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus vs Normal-sized Dinosaur!
Bring this to Wales in September! It sounds epic.
Aye aye captain.
In the very first scene, 3 minutes into the movie:
-Blondie is holding the joystick -pretending to pilot the submarine and we see that she isnt wearing any nail polish.
-Every time she “uses” the computer to enter coordinates the female hand in the shot -randomly pushing the same buttons over and over again – is wearing dark nail polish.
WTF? lol…
That’s why I reviewed it!
“Never love the ocean…”