Megashark Vs Crocosaurus: One glass of wine was not enough...

Warning: Movie not as awesome as DVD cover appears

Megashark Vs Crocosaurus is one of the lamest movies I've watched in a long while.  And for The Queen Of Cheese, that's saying something. 

Asylum Productions recycles the surprisingly enjoyable Megashark Vs Giant Octopus storyline, but brings in a giant, prehistoric crocodile instead.  I'm all for recycling ideas and churning out B-movies, even C and D movies.  But this ended up being an endurance test to sit through the entire thing.  That's why I finally cracked open my 1999 bottle of Castillo Del Corzo red wine and had a tall glass while I vowed I would make it to the end of this "movie".

What makes this bad, and not in a good way?  Absolutely no love given to the script.  It's a mish mash of plot holes, random associations, and completely wooden characters that give you nothing to grab onto.  The weak attempts at humor just make it more pathetic.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm glad they at least tried to put some funny in there, but with a story that discombobulated it just falls flat.

Add to that an ensemble of actors who seem like they could have done so much better than this "movie'.  We have Sarah Lieving as the hard nosed military type person first sent to recruit Jaleel White as the lone survivor of the Megashark's attack on a Navy ship, and then Gary Stretch as the less than savory guy who takes advantage of natives to make a buck, and somehow has enough manpower and connections to capture and transport a gigantic Crocosaurus across the ocean.  We even get a surprising amount of screen time for poor bastard Robert Picardo, who I loved way back when he was on China Beach, and am vaguely aware of from Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis. Jaleel White survived child star fame, only to be in something this bad?  Gary Stretch has an impressive resume, but this role definitely leaves a black hole in it.  Sarah Lieving has a lot of roles under her belt, too.  I've seen her in a few, including Beast Of Bray Road, and I know she has more talent than this role showcases.

There's a lot of chemistry amongst the cast, despite the distracted, lackluster script.  I suspect a lot of the issues with Megashark Vs Crocosaurus are due to brutal editing to fit a certain time constraint.  With the way the scenes jump around with very little connectivity, the way characters are thrust together with casual mentions that they know each other and have prior conflict, and giant plot craters, the actors can only deliver their lines and hang on until the bitter end.  There could have been genuine camaraderie among the characters, but any scene that could have made you care is probably on the cutting room floor.

This is soooo much better than the sequel!Let's talk about the special effects.  Maybe it was the tall glass of wine, but the graphics weren't that bad, all things considered.  But then again, all things considered, the CGI didn't have high standards to live up to.  There's plenty of recycled CGI of the Megashark, and some good looking CGI of the Crocosaurus.  There's more footage of the creatures than there were in MegaShark Vs Giant Octopus, but Asylum saved some bucks by showing lots of shadows in the water instead of actual creatures.  At least a little love was there in the details, even though the details were still as sparse as ever for an Asylum Production.

Megashark Vs Crocosaurus had no plot, managed to waste a lot of actor's talents, and an hour and a half of my time.  This one is so bad I won't even buy the DVD if I see it on sale for $5-like I did with a squeal of delight when I spotted Megashark Vs Giant Octopus for that price a few months ago.  The poor clerk in Fred Meyer's may never be the same.

Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus: Yes, it's as bad as the name would have you believe!

Giggles galore!

As soon as I saw the title Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus, I knew this movie was meant for me. I laughed my way through the wooden acting, and the frugally dispersed CGI of a cool looking Mega Shark and Giant Octopus. I even went so far as to watch the "special features", and those were even funnier. The "outtakes" give one actor about five minutes more screen time than the two minutes he actually had, because he couldn't get one of his three lines right. Listening to the four main actors discuss the movie is almost painful to endure. They try to talk it up, but look in their eyes. They're dying inside as they do so. Three of the four don't even get enough courtesy to have their interview conducted inside a nice, quiet room where you can even hear them. But that's okay. For Debra Gibson's segment I was too distracted by the guy working behind her who kept showing butt crack every time he bent over. The funniest extra was the short clip with the "cinematographer", especially as he tries to get the poor camera person to help him demonstrate a cheap, but effective, technique to mimic a submarine being thrashed around.

But the special features weren't what drew me in. It was the ridiculous plot, passable (I'm being generous) acting, and whiplash-inducing blips of CGI. C'mon, people, a giant shark takes out a passenger jet in mid-air! And attacks the Golden Gate Bridge! Show me that in the previews and you know I'm going to be salivating to watch the rest of what passes for the movie.

Sadly the previews give away the best parts, but this is such a train wreck I will be buying myself a copy when I see it cheap enough. $19.99 definitely is not cheap enough, but get down to the $7.99 range, and I'll be reminding people about it at Xmas time.

So what's all the hub bub about? Debra Gibson is an ocean scientist who is exploring underwater. She notices whales going nuts and crashing themselves into icebergs. This in turn knocks away enough ice for her to catch a glimpse of two prehistoric creatures locked in mortal combat, just before they come back to life and zip away into the murky depths. Giant sized incidents occur around the globe, including an attack on an oil rig, and our fun little plane munch. Governments naturally get involved, and our lovely scientist finds herself caught up in it, along with her former professor, and a forced love interest in the guise of a fellow scientist from Japan. After some lame science, an even lamer excuse for the main characters to have sex, and an even lamer resulting hypothesis about pheromones as a result of that sex, we're off on a monster hunt.

Really, don't bother trying to figure out the plot. It's the same old stuff with government conspiracies, scientists saving the day, and narrow escapes thrown in. This is a low budget (comparatively) movie, and it shows in the small cast and limited sets. I'm actually pretty impressed with how much bang for their buck Asylum gets for their bad movies, and don't mind how much they recycle things between them. I'm watching for giggle factor and cheese, and Asylum delivers at least one time out of five.

For the beleaguered cast I have to give props for at least having fun with the movie. Yes, in their little interviews they may be taking it a little too seriously, but at least that didn't filter too much into the actual movie. There's a lot of tongue in cheek delivery of lines, and I get the feeling that they were trying not to roll their eyes as they said most of them. Debra Gibson isn't the best little actress in the world, but she's definitely not as bad as some I've seen. She holds her own against poor bastard Lorenzo Lamas, who sounded like he really wanted them to kill off his character so he wouldn't have to risk a sequel. Her professor, played by Sean Lawlor, is the believable mentor. The love interest, played by Vic Chao, plays his role a little too "this will get me an Oscar, right?", but he's still very likable, and has decent chemistry with Gibson.

All in all, Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus is a giant waste of time. However, it's a funny-groaningly-bad-leave-you-giggling-and-feeling-slightly-guilty-about-finding-it-so-funny, giant waste of time. And for the Queen Of Cheese, that's good enough!