Piranha 3D: The Perfect Mindless Summer Movie

Not every movie that is made is destined be an award winning piece of high art. Some are meant to be down and dirty, using the lowest common denominators of excessive violence, gore, sex and nudity in order to bring in an audience. While many times the result is sad and exploitative, occasionally a movie has so much of these elements in it that it becomes an enjoyable outing. Your mind will not grow from seeing the movie, but you will have a fun time.

Piranha 3D might redefine the definition of a mindless summer movie. It has nothing intelligent to say to its audience. And it’s so full of plot holes one wonders if the script was written over a drunken weekend. The plot itself is as flimsy as they come: an earthquake releases thousands of prehistoric piranhas into a lake during spring break, where hundreds of horny college students have invaded a small lakeside town. Elisabeth Shue plays the town sheriff who’s trying to get everyone out of the lake, Jerry O’Connell plays the obnoxious host of a girls gone wild type series who hires the sheriff’s son (Steven R. McQueen) to find good filming locations, and Christopher Lloyd pops up as a crazed fish expert.

But none of that seems to matter. What matters is that there are many sights in this movie that have to be seen to be believed. Richard Dreyfuss singing “Show Me the Way to Go Home”. Two women performing an underwater nude ballet that lasts for three uninterrupted minutes. A man riding a jet ski and shooting at the piranha with a shotgun. A guy plowing into dozens of people as he tries to escape the carnage in a speedboat. A girl having her face ripped off by a propeller. A man’s severed penis eaten by a piranha and then spit back out (yes, this actually happens). If you think you’re being spoiled from these tidbits, don’t worry. There’s at least 50 other sights one will experience within this movie.

The movie is of course released in 3D, and the result is for the most part worth the extra admission. While no where near as strong as the 3D effects in Avatar, they aren’t fuzzy and unnecessary. Audiences will squirm all the more when flying body parts come flying out at you and the killer fish jump right in your face.

While I enjoy smart movies that make you think, I also see the value in turning your brain off and going for the ride at the cinema. And Piranha 3D is the most mindless enjoy the ride movie that’s been made in years. Go out and see it. You might hate to admit it, but you’ll have a good time.

Be a good little Pilgrim and see this Movie

While many movies try to create the nostalgia for classic video games and comic books through references and in-jokes, few movies truly capture the feeling of actually being in a classic video game or comic book. It’s not hard to see why, since they're two very different visual forms of story telling. But Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the very equivalent these two mediums fused together and turned into a movie. To the point in where it’s as if someone videotaped a video game being played and put the footage on screen. The result is a quirky and silly ride that’s a complete laugh riot.

Based on the Scott Pilgrim comic series, the film follows Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), an apathetic hipster slacker who plays bass for the up and coming band Sex Bob-omb. He shares a apartment with his better off and annoyingly sarcastic gay roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin) and is dating an impressionable high schooler named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), though their relationship is very one sided as she adores him and he sees her more as someone he can simply call a girlfriend. At a party one night he meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a cool pink haired girl from New York who keeps appearing in his dreams. He instantly falls for her and awkwardly pursues her, where eventually she starts to like him back. But at a battle of the bands event he’s attacked by Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha), the first of Ramona’s exes. After an intense fight, in which Matthew is reduced to coins, Ramona informs Scott that in order for them to date he will have to defeat her seven evil exes. A few of the other exes are the “vegan power” aided Todd (Brandon Routh), the angry half ninja Roxie (Mae Whitman) and the egotistical mastermind Gideon (Jason Schwartzman).

As previously stated this movie feels as if you’re in the world of a video game. Information bars appear whenever a new character is introduced. Characters move from one vastly different location to another in mid conversation. The fights are extremely exaggerated, with fighters being punched thirty feet into the air and getting up with out a scratch, the exes and Scott having super human powers, and Scott getting prizes and power-ups whenever an ex is defeated. It makes for a very fun and zany ride.

Though Michael Cera again plays a hapless geeky guy, this time he adds a bit of a jerk quality to his performance. Though the difference is subtle, it’s nice to see a departure from his usual repertoire. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays her role mysteriously cool, never letting us entirely in but always leaving us wanting more. The two standouts though, and again proving the rule that the supporting characters are usually the most memorable, are Kieran Culkin as Wallace and Ellen Wong as Knives Chau. Culkin is delightfully selfish, displaying a charm that makes the audience root for him even when he’s a complete dick. And Wong is a real treat. Her ability to seamlessly go from sweetly excitable to obsessively starkerish is adorable to watch. Hopefully we see more of this bubbly actress in the near future.

All in all Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a huge treat for movie goers to experience. The only bad thing about the movie is that more people aren’t gong to see it. Hopefully people realize the ride of the summer they are missing and go see this movie. You won’t be disappointed.