Shark Attack In The Mediterranean: Great German Cheese!

Cool shark graphics, horrible English dubs, and cheesy fun!

There's just something about a shark attack movie I can't resist. When it's a German made flick with horrible English dubs, that just melts the cheese into a bubbly fondue.

In this case we have Shark Attack In The Mediterranean. A man, Sven Hanson, is trying to keep his life together after losing his wife in what we're told is a horrific shark attack. His teenage daughter is into jet skies and stealing people's boyfriends (even though she does it so sweetly, and the current girlfriend is such a snot you can hardly blame the guy), and rolling her eyes at her father. His best friend is head of the local police force, with a wife wasting away from cancer. Our hero flies a helicopter, and his latest passenger happens to be an attractive marine biologist, Julia Bennett, arriving on the island to help with cancer studies involving lots and lots of sharks. We now have our basic setup of conflict.

Right off the bat we get a young girl (horribly dubbed with a voice too young to fit the actress) setting the stage by telling a tale of tragic love that ends at the bottom of the ocean. The girl is with her family, all tourists in this Mediterranean paradise who wanted to cage dive with sharks. Well, the sharks aren't biting, so the captain of the boat decides to drag the cage, with the tourists still inside, along the bottom to a more dangerous spot where sharks are guaranteed. The cage gets caught on the bottom, the rope breaks, one of the tourists cuts their hand, and they're suddenly surrounded by an awesome display of fluid shark graphics. Even knowing it's got to be fake, it really looks cool, and eerily realistic, including sharks biting at the cage trying to catch a nibble of fingers and other parts.

So our pilot and his passenger come along in the nick of time to save the day. It gives us a chance to see that they have a lot in common, and to make it clear they're going to be love interests. We also get a chance to see our hero be an over-protective father when he sees that his daughter is part of the crew of the ship in such dire straits. Arguments ensue, we get some melodrama over the father wanting to move back to Germany and the daughter not wanting to go, and the police friend stepping in with his sick wife to talk about living every moment instead of living in the past. Good stuff, and probably very well acted, despite what the voice actors would have you believe.

But the meat of the story is about a megalodon. It's entirely unbelievable how a renegade scientist came into possession of a megalodon, although believable that it then escaped. However, the ensuing graphics are so very cool I can forgive all of this movie's plot holes. You really need to watch the movie so you can hear first hand all of the flawed science, but more to see the CGI of the megalodon as it cruises the Mediterranean. There's a scene where the hero is basically fishing for it with his helicopter, and the megalodon grabs a hold of the lure. We get several minutes of slick, believable underwater scenes of the shark rolling and thrashing, putting the folks at Discovery Channel to shame.

There's also plenty of humor throughout Shark Attack In The Mediterranean, provided both by the ludicrous storyline and by secondary characters that are riotously exaggerated. Humor is what's missing from a lot of B-movies lately, and this was like a breath of fresh air for me. Finally, another movie that doesn't take itself so seriously, and revels in the cheese!

Shark Attack In The Mediterranean isn't terribly original, but it's fun, and has the best shark CGI I have seen. Surprisingly there's no gore, which made me happier yet. A little blood, a flash of a body, but nothing horrendous trying to gross you out. Basically this is a well done B-movie about a prehistoric shark come to life, and was worth every second of screen time. If you love Shark Attack 3: Megalodon in all of it's cheesy glory, you're going to enjoy this movie for all the right reasons!

Alright, the trailer is in German, but it's the effects on the shark that make this movie so cool to watch!