The term ‘Guilty Pleasure’ often proves to be a convenient scapegoat when discussing a movie. It’s a little like saying “It’s so bad, it’s good”. ‘Pleasure’ indicates you enjoyed the experience to some measure and ‘Guilty’ obviously indicates you shouldn’t have. Piranha 3D is more like smelling you own farts than eating a second slice of chocolate cake. The ‘Pleasure’ is beyond guilty, it’s practically wrong. Though at the same time, it’s hard to trash something like Piranha 3D that gleefully goes so far out of its way to turkey slap you in the face (in 3D) with its blood-soaked inanity. From it’s under water nude lesbian cavorting to its penis belching titular antagonists, this film is an 80 plus minute parade of the most juvenile sensibilities a major Hollywood release has ever put on the screen. I really wish I could honestly say Piranha 3D was as much fun as it sounds. While there is some genuine humour and some genuine tension, the major flaw of Piranha 3D is the complete dispensing of any story. What we get here is more of a situation, all details are just skimmed over to make way for more boobs and blood. I’d like to say that maybe this was intentional and a subverting of exploitation cinema, and believe me, at first I really thought that’s what we were getting. And where the hell was the third act? Talk about a major prick tease! Maybe a director’s cut will reveal more as the trailer featured several shots that don’t appear in this version of the movie. Even Joe Dante’s Piranha (1978) had more of a story. It’s at this point I’d like to make it clear that Aja’s movie is not a remake, it merely shares the title. Infact, I’d say his movie has more in common with James Cameron’s Piranha II: The Spawning. That movie had its fair share of boobs and a strong willed female protagonist. While horror and humour is something Aja’s film does have in common with Dante’s, for all its gore, Piranha 3D has nothing of the horror and brutality Aja elicited for his Hills Have Eyes remake and his debut feature Haute Tension. Aja’s Piranha is basically a gross-out comedy. Points must be given to Elizabeth Shue for giving us a likeable heroine even if we learn next to nothing about her during our brief seafood dinner date. Like most recent horror fair we are encouraged to hate just about everybody else, they all deserve to be eaten alive. None more than Jerry O’Connell’s porn director. While I see why this should be funny, O’Connell was just so vile, even his over-the-top death scene wasn’t penance enough. And what of the all important 3D? I’d have to agree with the detractors of the format. It has little effect here. You certainly know where the effect should be, but it never has that reach-out-and-grab-you feel, which is a real shame, because it should have worked and I’m sure that’s what Aja had intended. So, what is there to like about this scaly feeding frenzy? The piranha look great and all the gore is handled with aplomb. There is one death involving hair and a boat engine I just can’t get out of my head or for that matter what happens to Eli Roth. Aside from the shonky 3D, the movie is shot well, bright and bold. I can’t keep musing that one day this Piranha will go the way of Showgirls. A shameless dalliance in celluloid depravity that actually gets better the more you watch it and, strangely enough, layers of subtext are revealed you never thought existed or were intended.
Would I watch it again? Yes. Will I see the sequel? Yes. Guilty as charged.
