Shark Attack Three |
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The Worst Film in the World!!! Starring
the most charming leading man. |
Cast (in credits order)
Directed by David Worth
Well, let’s get one thing clear. I only watched this film for one reason and I make no apologies for it. John Barrowman is in nearly every scene looking utterly gorgeous, young and heterosexual. It is a female Barrowman fan’s DREAM. But, after all, I have got a degree in literature and a higher diploma in media studies. I know a bad film when I see one, and this is a bad film.
Of course, it had precious little chance of being a good film. It is a second sequel to a film that didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Why those involved didn’t try a bit harder to rise above the shortcomings, I don’t know. The mediocre special effects might have been overlooked if there was some decent writing, a bit of sparkling dialogue, a bit of real humour. An original plot might have helped, too. Why did they even bother making something this derivative and badly made in the first place? Did it make any money? Did it do anything for the careers of anyone involved in it? John Barrowman certainly didn’t get famous from it. What was the point?
Anyway, the film opens with a bunch of people diving from a rather prettily lit survey ship, doing something with a cable. They’re being hassled to get on with the job by a man with a cigar who almost certainly shouldn’t have been smoking in the communications room. There is some ominous rip off Jaws-type music and some gruesome close ups of bloody remains on the sea bed. Incidentally, shots like that, as well as unnecessary swearing and even less necessary nudity seem to be sprinkled about like confetti in order to assure an 18 rating and make it seem like a grown up film. It doesn’t work. Another thing that seems odd, is that none of the people in this sequence are seen again in the film.
Next, it is six months later in Colima, Mexico, and the cameras pan around a resort for beautiful people in small bathing suits. It looks like a parody of Baywatch I recall once, where fat, old and unattractive people were barred from the beach. At least the population of Amity looked real!
Lots of smiles from Ben! The first name that comes up as the credits role is John Barrowman, which surprised me the first time. I didn’t realise from all the jokes and gossip that he was actually the STAR of this film. I thought it was one of those things he did while waiting to be famous. But there you go. He’s the star, and if you missed his name on the credits the next seven minutes of the film leaves you in no doubt. It basically consists of John’s character, Ben Carpenter, in a deliciously tight t-shirt and jeans, picking up two cups of coffee and walking through the resort, smiling sweetly and interacting with some of the people who might feature later in the story, including Ramirez the local Romeo and his latest flame and his friends Chuck and Hector. Chuck is an ex- US Navy Seal who owns a mini-sub. Hector has a helicopter and the way they look at each other I actually wondered if they were meant to be an item. The whole seven minutes seems to consist of Ben smiling and laughing at things that aren’t even amusing and giving the impression he’s a happy man who loves his job. At least half of it could have been cut, or at least made to sparkle a bit. John Barrowman could talk the hind legs of a donkey and then make it walk afterwards. The bits of dialogue he has are stilted and dull. He is wasted even in this purely cosmetic montage.
Ben eventually makes it to the boat where his pal Esai is waiting. They then set off in the boat and there is a piece of dialogue that goes something like this. “Aren’t we lucky, we get paid to patrol all these beaches.” Now, exposition is always an issue in any script. You have to let people know who your characters are and what they do. But there had to be a better way than that of getting across that Ben and Esai protect the resort from unspecified dangers – presumably including sharks. It was so clumsily done, as was the banter between Ben and Esai about whether they would get in trouble for diving for lobsters outside their patrol area after their shift.
Ben finds a shark tooth while diving for lobsters. But the way he found it is just a bit implausible. He had already bagged the lobsters and then started feeling around on the cable and prizing out a shark tooth that nobody could have spotted accidentally. Why was he even looking? Later, that tooth actually comes into one of the indisputably silliest moments of the film. Ben, looking moody and thoughtful compares the tooth to an online database that in no way looked comprehensive to me. He doesn’t find it, so he holds the tooth, sideways, to his digital camera, attached to the computer. The picture that instantly appears on screen is of the tooth pointed upright, with a clean white background and no sign of Ben’s fingers holding it. Come on, guys, how dumb is that? Anyway, Ben posts his find and then, presumably, goes and enjoys his lobster supper.
What a Clever Camera. Built in Photoshop? Meanwhile, in San Diego, there is a totally pointless conversation between palaeontologist Cataline Stone and a night guard which, like Ben and Esai’s boat dialogue seemed to there to explain who she was. But she then goes and sits down at a desk with a nameplate that says ‘Cataline Stone, Palaeontologist’ on it. She has some rather cheap business cards that say the same. Another totally pointless scene that could have been cut, but by now, if I had a say in it, this film would only be ten minutes long.
Anyway, Cat, who hasn’t got time for a sandwich, has time to trawl the message boards and finds Ben’s shark tooth picture. She gets very excited and flips through a glossy coloured book of the sort sold by those book clubs on the back of magazines. Very unlikely. She’s supposed to be an expert on these things. She would consult a proper species catalogue, not a bumper book of dinosaurs.
Cat rushes down to Mexico to find Ben and his tooth, and since he’s a cute man and she’s a cute woman, the hero and heroine slots are filled. What follows is a fairly predictable middle section of the film where various extras get chomped by the shark and Ben gets worried. It’s at this point when the accusations of being derivative come in, with Ben getting to do the scene from Jaws where the chief of police demands that the beaches are closed, but with far less interesting dialogue and without the passion and anger that Roy Scheider had.
Ben's Roy Scheider moment! Where it deviates from Jaws is that they actually kill the Megalodon halfway through the film. Ben whacks it with a baseball bat which for some reason is kept in the cabin of a motor launch – why? Who is planning to play baseball at sea? - and Cat manages to shoot the brains out of it. They’re just celebrating their success, though, when momma Megalodon, sixty feet long, with a ten foot bite, swallows Esai and his boat. Ben does look convincingly upset about that, it has to be said. And when he gets back to land, he has another Roy Scheider style set to with his boss while Chuck – remember him – goes and has one with his boss. Ben, Chuck and Cat compare notes and realise its up to them to catch the mega-Megoladon. And here the plot really gets daft. Chuck, apparently, has a live torpedo as a souvenir of his US Navy career. He lives in Mexico. Doesn’t that make him a gun runner? Anyway, they’re going to blow up the Megalodon with it.
But not until 8am. Meanwhile, Ben is feeling wired and would like to eat Cat’s pussy! This line is the source of most hilarity about the film, apart from beating up a shark with a baseball bat! John Barrowman has explained many times that this was an ad lib that he was asked to come up with to animate the actress standing next to him. Now, the whole galaxy by now knows that John is gay, which probably explains why his idea of a come on line to a woman is so crass. But what is worse, is they left it in the film. Even worse, having been handed such a crude suggestion, which ought to have earned Ben a slap at the best, she apparently takes him up on the offer. I find that the most unlikely thing of all. No woman would be impressed by such a pick up line. And there was nothing in the film up to now to suggest she was remotely interested in him in that way. And yet, there is a short sequence of Cat and Ben in the shower getting raunchy which I would have been unconvinced by even if I didn’t know that John Barrowman was gay! It was as if there is a handbook for thriller making that says ‘about the 60 minute mark, male and female lead must have sex’. So even though the story didn’t need it, they did it.
Gratuitous and uncalled for sex scene! The next day Chuck and Ben go off in the yellow submarine, and I don’t know why, but Ben looks bloody uncomfortable with his legs astride the co-pilot seat. Nothing he does in this sequence looks natural. It really doesn’t help that he’s piloting a sub using what looks like a Play Station console and a couple of joysticks from an Atari. Ben’s tortured expressions when he’s using the computer games joystick to manoeuvre the explosives in place are something I never want to see an actor I like do again. And by the way, seriously, a box with the words ‘explosives’ on it? All it was short of was an ‘Acme Products’ logo.
Of course the plan goes pear-shaped. Mainly because Ben’s ex-boss, Luiz and the bent industrialist, Tolley, are having a party on a big boat up above and the Megalodon is more interested in eating rich people than their bait. I have to say, actually, as corny as it is, that we cheered in our house when Luiz jumped straight into the Meg’s mouth and Tolley drove his water bike or whatever it was straight down its throat. Poetic justice, at least. But the special effects are terrible.
But now comes the most unlikely bit of all. Ben jams the sub into the Meg’s mouth and launches the torpedo, which shoots out, turns around and heads back to its target – the sub. Ben escapes in the nick of time – well, sort of. Now, we’ve all seen CSI. We know about blast waves and the rest of it. Ben was still too close to the explosion. His insides should have been turned to soup by the impact. But no, he is simply knocked unconscious and floats to the surface, face down. Cat and one of the survivors of the big boat drag him into the lifeboat, and with no CPR, no medical attention whatever, he wakes up, coughs a bit, and makes a cute comment. No way! Even Captain Jack has more trouble than that coming back to life. A mere human like Ben should have been much closer to death than that.
If you adore John Barrowman, and lots of us do, it’s a fun bit of hokum. And since it was made a little over two years before his big break in Doctor Who, it is interesting to spot certain gestures and body language that we have come to associate with Captain Jack - such as the way he shakes his head in a certain way when he has to say no to anyone and that decisive way he folds his arms when he’s being steadfast and unbending. And of course, that toothpaste advert smile of his. But I cannot imagine why somebody as intelligent as John, who has worked his way up in show business for over twenty years, read a script like that and said yes. He is wasted in it. The only useful thing this film does is give all the female fans a glimpse of what he might be like if he was straight to feed our night-time fantasies with. For that reason alone, it goes in my collection. My hobby now is watching American made for TV movies and comparing them to Shark Attack Three one that lifts it off the bottom of the worst film in the world list. And actually, there ae quite a few films that badly need a handsome man with a cute smile to talk dirty to the female lead. Shark Attack Three is not the worst film in the
world. It just feels like it.
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