Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus (2010)
Reviewed by The Foywonder
Starring Gary Stretch, Jaleel White, Sarah Lieving, Robert Picardo
Directed by Christopher Douglas-Olen Ray
I’ve come to two conclusions after watching Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus twice in less than 24 hours. The first is that it made me feel like I was watching anime: nothing made any damn sense and the characters were constantly speaking in loud, declarative statements. The second is that if I was an MMA fighter and Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus was my opponent, I would have been forced to tap out from too many hard shots to the head.
My first viewing was very late at night. Unsure what to make of what I had just witnessed, I decided it best to sleep on it before attempting to put any thoughts into words. The next day I suckered my unsuspecting 16-year-old niece who had stopped by into watching it with me again in order to help gain a fresh perspective on this latest Asylum “mega” movie.
I happily embraced the lunacy of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and Mega Piranha, the latter of which I believe borders on being a masterwork of absurdity and may very well make it onto my year-end best list, believe it or not. Both of those Asylum “mega” movies had method to their madness. This “mega” sequel tries coasting by on the mentality that if you’re watching a movie called Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus, you’re already willing to accept anything regardless of how incoherent it is or if it is riddled with careless continuity errors, both technical and script-wise. Movies like this always tread a fine line between anything-goes fun and merely insulting your intelligence, and this time The Asylum may have finally jumped the mega shark.
The sloppy disregard for continuity is established in the very first scene when the prehistoric Crocosaurus awakens and emerges from the bowels of a diamond mine in the Congo. We see a cruel guard standing at the mouth of the cave swallowed from the darkness by the croc within. A fleeing miner outside then turns to see this gargantuan crocodile just standing there out in the open, never shown emerging, probably because given the enormity of this animal, the cave would barely be as big as its throat. The scale is so out of whack that later someone will take cover inside the same cave to escape the giant croc, too big to get to him in there.
Having been at large for what appears to only be a matter of hours, the giant prehistoric crocodile somehow manages to lay hundreds of eggs at varying locations all over the globe, many of which are already beginning to hatch.
The girlfriend of Jaleel White’s Naval underwater acoustics expert is killed when the mega shark slams his battleship; she’s found lifeless on the deck with a few ropes and a tarp having fallen atop her and a pool of blood around her torso. What exactly killed her? To quote my niece: “Huh?”
White gets recruited by a government agent (Sarah Lieving, nearly every line of her dialogue sternly delivered as if it were precipitating a kick to the groin). She introduces herself to him as a special agent working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and later to someone else as a Secret Service agent. Which is it?
A “Crocodile Dundee” type (Stretch, getting top billing over the former TV Urkel) appears to get devoured by the Crocosaurus. The croc almost immediately spits him out and collapses unconscious. To quote my niece, “What just happened?” That government agent somehow knew precisely where to find the great white hunter inside a tiki bar on a tropical island he only just washed ashore of minutes earlier after getting shipwrecked. How?
I can only assume this movie takes place in one of the Inception dream layers because hours feel like seconds and days feel like minutes. People and creatures globetrot in so quickly you’d think they were traveling by Tardis.
I do have to say in its favor that I was never bored. Those that complained there wasn’t enough action in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus will definitely find more fast-paced mayhem this time. Though the trade-off is that the action occurs in such micro bursts there’s never any time to savor any of it, the computer effects are far worse than in any previous “mega” movies, many of the FX shots looked like some random backdrop the croc or the shark were inserted into, the titular fight is mostly just a series of underwater tail-fin biting death spirals, and do not expect a single moment anywhere near as epic as the Megalodon shark biting an airliner out of the sky in the original.
Gigantic sea animals jumping out of the water with submarines in their jaws; didn’t I just see that several times a month ago in The Asylum’s 2010: Moby Dick?
Will you enjoy it for what it is? I don’t know. Chances are if you’re even bothering to read a review of a movie titled Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus, you already know whether or not this is a movie you have any intention of ever sitting through. Did I enjoy it for what it is? I’m still not sure. I rented it from Redbox for a dollar, and a dollar’s worth of entertainment is about what I got.
As for my niece’s perspective, every time I looked over, the expression on her face was either that of annoyed confusion, eye-rolling disbelief, or the infrequent chuckle. When the closing credits rolled, she let out a sigh of relief. I told her I was at a total loss as to how to rate this movie and asked her how she would score it. She did not offer up a star or letter rating. She did not give a thumb’s up or a thumb’s down. She merely summed up her opinion of the movie with one word. For better or worse, all things considered, I believe this word to be most befitting:
1 Megacraposaurus out of 5
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