Piranha 3D

Piranha 3D, was it ever good? Let’s take a closer look and find out!

The Scores

Interest: 6/10

Acting: 6/10

Storyline: 5/10

Intensity: 5/10

Fights Guns or Otherwise: 5.5/10

Nudity: 10/10

Director Score: 6.5/10

Musical Score: 6/10

Dialogue: 6/10

Logic In The Film: 6.5/10

Piranha 3D came out in 2010. The genres it uses are comedy and horror. Its run time is one hour and twenty-eight minutes. The three main stars of the film are Richard Dreyfuss (Known for The Goodbye girl, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Mr. Holland’s Opus), Ving Rhames (Known for Pulp Fiction, Bringing Out the Dead, Mission: Impossible II, and Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation), and Elisabeth Shue (Known for Leaving Las Vegas, Adventures in Babysitting, The Saint, and The Karate Kid (1984)). Alexandre Aja is the director (Known for High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Piranha 3D, and Maniac). A quick summary of the film is “A beer bottle falling to the bottom of the lake causes tremors that set loose some prehistoric Piranha too much and maul tourists for spring break, and an unlikely group of people band together to stop themselves and others from being fish-food.” Let's take a look at the categories!

Interest: Interest of the film to me is very peaks and valleys. I am either super interested in a scene or I forget the film is one type of interest. Some parts are funny, some are just awkward, but I at least followed the story and understood what was going on. It isn’t that it’s boring, it’s just from a time that movies of this class started to use CGI (Very bad CGI) for the film, and having less story involvement made it a whole new caliber of schlock.

Acting: The acting in the film is alright. Nothing grand, but passable, assuming you’re into the whole teen party scene movies. I’d actually dare to say that it may be one of the better films of this genre. But in certain aspects I’m pretty sure they nailed the roles down perfectly (The sleazy porn director, the girls doing porn etc.) but the “real” people seem a little disconnected from the actual real world, but isn’t so far off that it is unrelatable.

Storyline: The storyline is this film is pretty damn lame for the first half of the film, where the film is showing off a stereotypical spring break. But things go completely squirrely because of a beer bottle possibly causing a tremor that release ancient piranha that are very hungry to eat people in the water. It does get a little better after some “science” is explained, but otherwise it is just a movie that wants kills.

Intensity: The movie actually has some moderately intense moments and it is fun and exciting. The problem becomes that the climax hits super early for the intensity for me, but it tries to drag it out to make it seem like there is more in it than there really is.

Fights, Guns or Otherwise: Fights in the film tend to be a little lame, but one “fight” is a five minute scene that is just piranha vs people, and that scene, is super damn cool. Guns, boat motors, and Propane tanks are used to great affect to kill piranha, and the piranha were munching on people dumb enough to be in the water and not listen to the cops. It seems like no one will have PTSD or anything like that, and verbal razors are seldom, but when done, do seem to pack a punch.

Nudity: It’s a spring break horror movie, of course there is nudity. Lots of nudity, plus they have actual porn stars just flaunting themselves everywhere (Plus dying, which was fun) but yeah if nudity isn’t your cup of tea for no reason, consider yourself warned!

Director Score: Alexandre Aja is an okay director. This wasn’t his first foray in filming, but he hasn’t filmed much in his career (only directed 12 things) but he has directed. Most of his films are schlocky mess in some way. His shots aren’t bad, and actually some are pretty cool. The people he chose for the film isn’t bad, but the random porn stars seems a little excessive, but might be realistic to spring break. The clothes and costumes seemed well picked out as well too.

Musical score: The music in Piranha 3D is kind of a mixed bag, from metal music to some classical ambient music. Some of it is good and some of it is bad. I can’t really say what makes it bad, it just seems a little off from what should have happened.

Dialogue: The dialogue in the film is okay. Nothing makes things incredibly intriguing until the very end of the film. The dialogue otherwise I think fit the people portrayed in the film. The porn Director acts like a porn director, Teenage boy who has a huge crush on a girl who clearly has a crush on him, and they are awkward as shit!

Logic in the film: The logic in the film personally is asinine. I say this because cops show up and are literally telling everyone to leave the waters, so they don’t get eaten alive, and they all just stay there, being eaten alive by swarms of piranha. Physics seem to work as they should. People take very little care about safety or their lives in the film, even the cops just go into the water, and then die a moment later.

Did I enjoy the film? Yes I did. Do I suggest Piranha 3D? Yes I do. I think it hits just enough of everything that somebody could at least sit through it and call it average. It is of course a film that can totally be ripped on and made fun of among friends. Its CGI is very lame (Not quite Birdemic, but holy hell is it bad!), the acting is okay, but feels corny and forced, porn stars are everywhere and I’m pretty sure the DJ says for a wet t-shirt contest or just get naked because “Girls, show us your Danny Davito’s.”, like what the hell!? But all in all I give Piranha 3D a 62.5%, it isn’t great, but it is doable, even if you only watch it once. Well, Until Next Time!