When you hear the title Piranha 3D, even if you didn’t know about the 1978 original, chances are you think of a ridiculous horror movie with a ridiculous story and a lot of exploitative sex, nudity and violence all put together with writing so questionable it may as well have been scrawled on a napkin at a fast food restaurant. And you wouldn’t really be wrong but in this case the majority of those things are not only done intentionally but fully embraced.  Piranha 3D knows exactly what it is and revels in it. Depending on your sensibility it is a hell of a lot of fun.

The story involves Spring Break at fictional Lake Vitoria, AZ after an earthquake opens up a fissure beneath the lake which in turn opens a tunnel to a lake underneath the lake. Unfortunately for the local sheriff (Elizabeth Shue) and her deputy (Ving Rhames) fishermen and cliff divers start to turn up dead apparently chewed up by something nasty. Before closing the lake, the sheriff enlists the help of some scientists, lead by Novak (Adam Scott), who quickly discover that the earthquake has released thousands of prehistoric piranha who are hungry for some sluts and bros after millions of years of cannibalism. Her day gets worse when her son (Steven R McQueen) turns out to be an irresponsible shit who would rather join up with Derick Jones (Jerry O’Connell) and his stable of Wild Wild Girls whores than baby sit his two younger siblings who of course end up on the water as well.

Let’s get down to brass tacks here. Piranha is very funny both intentionally and unintentionally as it tries to be bad on purpose and occasionally traipses into just bad but either way it is golden. I wasn’t excited about this movie because I thought it would be good, I was excited because I couldn’t wait to see how bad it was. As it turns out it is an incredibly satisfying exploitation film that never takes itself seriously and in doing so elevates itself out of so bad it is good territory and into so good at being bad it is back to good again.

Now of course you have to have the right sensibility for it and that should be pretty obvious. If you go to a movie like this and get offended by what is in it then it is your own fault. If you are the sort of person who likes to go on IMDB and proclaim that this movie SHOULDN’T EVEN EXIST!!1!!!1!! or ONLY MORONS LIKE SHIT LIKE THIS! WHY DO YOU STAND FOR IT? then not only will you hate this movie but you should probably seek therapy for hyper tension and also have your ass  X-rayed for whatever it is that is wedged up in there. This movie is very much an exploitation film with gore, violence, nudity and insanely bad dialogue that is awesome.

So how much gore, violence and nudity is there? It apparently didn’t get its R rating until nine days before release and some material had to be trimmed to get out of NC-17 territory. I can’t wait for the DVD to see the unrated version. As it is I am pretty shocked by what is still on the screen because it really pushes the envelope.

To start with the gore, the movie takes its time building up to the really gory stuff. The first few kills are kind of tame and I started to worry that it was going to be weak sauce (on the gore front anyway) right up until the wet t-shirt contest, which is MCed by the Bear Jew himself Eli Roth, when all hell breaks loose and people get fucked up. The piranhas are ruthless as they eat their way through several campuses worth of greek organizations and all the obnoxious establishing shots of bros and hos booty dancing to pop dance music really pay off as these vapid fuckers get skeletonized in very satisfyingly gruesome ways. Once the panic breaks out and douche bags start jacking boats and driving through anyone who gets in their way, the carnage gets even more extreme. You couple that with Adam Scott hopping on a jet ski and shooting the lake with a shotgun and Ving Rhames taking the motor off a boat and killing piranhas with the prop and you have some of the most hilarious and satisfying violence and gore I have ever seen. They really let it all loose here and it is a whole lot of fun. Also, as an FYI, when Elizabeth Shue and Ving Rhames tell you to stay out of the water and get to shore? Everyone jumping into the water at once is not a great idea.

The violence and gore in this movie are only half of the story and the other half is, to put it simply, tits. Lots and lots of tits. And when I say lots of tits I mean A WHOLE TON OF TITS. I really can’t overstate this. I have seen soft core Cinemax porn (what I forget and leave it on Cinemax after watching legit movies) with less exposed boob than Piranha 3D. To illustrated the level of boobery involved here there is a protracted boob scene in which two enormously hot women Kelly Brooke and Riley Steele swim under water completely naked, occasionally making out, while being video taped through the glass bottom of the boat all to the soothing sounds of classical music. They do this for what seems like 10 or 15 minutes in the movie. They never come up for air and apparently are operating on notion that if two people swim naked underwater and make out they can just share the same air. I don’t know, the scene is ridiculous and glorious all at the same time and is a good example of the over the top gratuitousness this movie embraces to such wonderful effect.

The cast is just crazy boasting all of the aforementioned players as well as Christopher Lloyd and even Richard Dreyfuss who is very clearly meant to be reprising his role from Jaws. This is one of many in-jokes and references to other aquatic horror movies and exploitation movies. The performances are good for what they are. Everyone takes the material seriously which is needed for the movie to really invoke the proper level of terribleness. Seeing Christopher Lloyd here is great and all that could have made it better is if he could have given us a ‘1.21 GIGAWATS?’

It isn’t all great. The biggest flaw in Piranha 3D is the 3D part. You would think that if the movie was going to have 3D as part of the title they would have filmed in 3D instead of the awful post production conversion. A lot of shots had decent depth of field and it didn’t look as dim as these conversions tend to but the effects were not at all convincing and even those shots where things are meant to come out at the audience fail completely. It would be one thing if you could choose to watch this in 2D but when they take that option away from you, it makes the bad 3D even worse. I am looking forward to seeing this on Blu-ray as I am sure it will look much better. As it is, it looks a lot better picturewise than a lot of these conversions but the 3D was just disappointing and failed to deliver.

Conclusion [8.0 out of 10]

Like I said, this movie is not for everyone. It is nasty, gory, violent and very graphic. It is also very funny and while it never scares, it always delights. Some people think you have to be stupid or low brow to enjoy this kind of film but I submit that the sort of person who says that must not be very much fun to be around. If you don’t like the sorts of things in this movie, that is fine. There is nothing wrong with having different taste but I think the same goes for people who enjoy this kind of material, especially when it is played for laughs. I love movies that are so bad they are good and often when people set out to make one they fail on one side or the other. Piranha 3D is one that succeeds although not as much as if it would have just been called Piranha.