Piranha 3DD: A Socio-Aesthetic Analysis

Piranha 3DD is the sequel to a movie about prehistoric fish who attack boobs.

In Hollywood, as artisans of our craft, we so often strive for such degrees of perfection that even in our greatest triumph, we are left lingering on the possibilities where greatness was touched but not fully grasped. Here, too, the slavish devotion of director John Gulager pays off in every frame, yet one cannot help but believe his vision was left not entirely realized. Sure, a killer fish eats a man's penis from inside a woman's vagina, and I think we all understand what that says about society, but it doesn't offer a new solution for such age-old criticism. Ving Rhames replaces his leg with a shotgun while Paul Scheer babysits him through a bloodbath, and while groundbreaking in its observation on post-Obama American race-relations, it fails to acknowledge our stained history in the manner of a true hero, like Howard Zinn. David Koechner's decapitated head bounces back and forth between the implanted breasts of a stripper for a gravity-defying stretch of time; a shot which uses the same amount of money that could feed an entire starving village in Ethiopia for a year; but does such a choice have total validation when we've all seen Macbeth, or does Gulager believe his interpretation may historically trump the original.

Also, David Hasselhoff sings a song about having threesomes. Criterion Collection, are you listening?

The original, Piranha 3D, was a spring break hellscape, culminating in one of the most visceral final sequences in recent memory. It was also pretty damn funny. The new film attempts to replicate the original's formula of sexy bikini shots and silly monsters up against celebrity cameos, but lacks some of the truly over-the-top kills of its predecessor. Not that "kills" are why we're watching (….) but the second outing does far worse in both the intentionally and unintentionally humorous departments, which makes the new film boring in all the wrong spots. Characters aren't as exaggerated to the point of satire as they were in the first, which is probably why so many needed to find weird loop-holes by which to return, and the third act depends almost entirely on the belief that you will find David Hasselhoff’s mere presence to be hilarious. And this premise is applied beyond the third act; he’s lumped in to the LONGEST mid- and post-credit sequences and out-takes I've ever seen. Yeah, David Hasselhoff can't remember his lines. That's not inherently genius. Stop padding your run-time with it.

Centering the story in a water park should have been more fun than this. The entire production should have been more fun than this. Your film opens with Gary Busey, because you're building a brand of being the craziest bastards on the block, and then you let him die? I love seeing Christopher Lloyd again, but give his exposition to a new character. Or hell, cut out the teen characters entirely and just make these movies with ridiculous celebrities you've somehow lured to the project. I'd care more about that than some bizarre love triangle of douchebaggery.

*Spoiler Alert!*So if you ever plan on watching a movie, numbered/titled 3DD, stop here. Ok.. Done warning you. In the final sequence of the film, it is shown that the fish have sporadically evolved to walk on land. Then one decapitates a red headed kid and everyone laughs. Not just one laugh, but a laugh that carries us through the first of the several acts of the end credits.

You have a great start with Busey and a great end with a walking fish killing a ginger. Where was that level of inspired lunacy between those two bookends?

Better luck next time.