Sharks in Venice: Real Time Review

Sharks in Venice: Real Time Review

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1087474/


Nu Image. The world of cinema wouldn't be the same without these intrepid pioneers. Where would we be without their groundbreaking work in the field of Giant CGI Sharks Killing people movies? You know where? The fucking dark ages! Shark Attack 1, Shark Attack 2 the legendary Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, the film which jump-started the acting career of now super-star John Barrowman. Shark Zone. Raging Sharks. Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy! That's right motherfuckers, you better recognize the pedigree. These aren't some fucking amateurs. No, these guys know what's up when it comes to making movies about sharks attacking people in a frenzy in zones and whatever. And not just sharks either, friends: Crocodiles, Krakens, Ocotopi, Mansquitos! Snakes, mega and otherwise. You name it and these magnificent sons of bitches have made a movie about a giant and/or mutant CGI version of it wreaking havoc. When you watch a Nu Image killer animal/monster/alien flick, you better be prepared for something special.

Instant boner.

I'm diggin the aviators. Those Venetians have really got their accessorizing down to an art.

I'm no Italianologist or anything, so I can't really say with any conviction. For some reason, though, it sounded like that guy was just saying random, vaguely Italian sounding words in an attempt to sound as though he were an actual Italian person. I'm probably wrong, just an observation.

"This is the Andrea Doria. She is another "unsinkable" ship that went down in 1956. Sits in a depth of 250 feet in a place that, trust me, most of you would not want to be"
George Castanza would not approve.

This guy just got academically owned by Stephen fucking Baldwin. That must make him, like, ultra-tarded or something.

Is it wrong that Stephen is my favorite Baldwin? Because he is.

OK! Plot. plot time. Let me give you the rundown: Stephen fuckin Baldwin(!). Sharks. Venice. Figure it out.

Stephen Baldwin: "No."
Nnnooo...what...?

Boat accident? Propeller?! Come on! Don't spin me that old sham story, fat-cat. This was no boat accident! Though I won't yet rule out coral reef or Jack the Ripper.

I've seen enough fantasy shark attacks to know one when I see one. How many? Multiply every shark attack from every Jaws movie by 76. Yeah, I think it's fair to say I'm a bit of an expert when it comes to fake shark attacks, and I'm telling you...you've got a fake killer shark in Venice. So I would advise you get your all gondoliers to start taping fillet knives to the ends of their boat pushing sticks, because if I know fake killer sharks the way I think I do (and I do) then this fucker is only getting started.

Stephen Baldwin's father! Murdered by sharks! Knights! A Suitcase?

Alright, a bunch of blood-crazy knights killed a bunch of other un-crazy knights and stole their shit, then came to Venice and sank or something and the treasure was lost under water forever. Well forever just got a whole fuck of a lot shorter, because Stephen Baldwin is on the case.

This would be a lot cooler of the knights were actually fighting sharks. Underwater.

Just imagine one of them is a shark and they're underwater.

"It sounds like some kind of wishful fantasy"
Lady, I don't know what Italians fantasize about, but I've never had a fantasy about a bunch of knights stabbing each other with swords and stealing a priceless artifact. Except if all the knights were hot ladies and their swords were shaped like penises and the priceless artifact was a bunt-cake made to look like a green pumpkin. Then I have. But that's not what we're talking about here, now is it?

Stephen "fuckin" Baldwin: She's...really smart.
I guess opposites attract, huh Baldwin? Hahahaha! I'm just joshin ya. You rock, Baldwin. You rock my world.

This movie is going to be worth the price of the rental just for the inevitable underwater wrestling match between Stephen Baldwin and a great white shark.

Stephen Baldwin traversed an Indiana Jones style cavern filled with poorly timed booby traps to find a bunch of treasure. He then fist fought a great white shark and woke up in a hospital bed. The entire time between him beating the fuck out of the shark and waking up in the hospital was skipped over, so I'm forced to allow my imagination to fill in the blanks. I'm assuming he killed the shark, swam to shore, banged his girlfriend then went to a bar and told everyone about how he killed a shark with his bare hands, and which point everyone bought him drinks for being so badass and he mainlined Italian hard liquor for 27 hours before he passed out from rocking too hard. He was then taken to the hospital so they could harvest some of his blood to use in experiments to create Captain America-esque super-soldiers.

Some Italian mobsters are trying to coerce Baldwin into going back underwater for them. Presumably for a big-money rematch with the shark whose ass he kicked. Silly bastards, even if the shark had the balls to fight Stephen Baldwin again, it couldn't, because it’s fucking dead! Though I'm sure a shit-ton of people would still pay to see Stephen Baldwin punching the corpse of a great white shark underwater. I would.

Drunk Italian Chick: "No! You're trying to get me drunk!"
Trying?

Holy fucking fuck! Give me a second here, I just accidentally inhaled a spoonful of cereal into my lungs....oh...god. My sinuses are filled with milk and tiny bits of dried strawberry...Jesus. Wow. That was. I don't even know what to do but just list adjectives: wonderful, astounding, awe-inspiring. I can't find the right word to describe it. Thesaurus.com is really letting me down - http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/totally%20fucking%20awesome - I just don't know how to properly convey to you what I have just seen, no, experienced. I'll just try to take it step by step. A dude and a lady are standing on a street in Venice next to a canal. They're drinking, which may account for why the girl seems to be speaking with a Russian accent. All of a sudden a giant CGI shark leaps out of the canal in a cloud of CGI water. Leaps like a goddamn jellyfish with a rocket strapped to it's dick! Snatches the mother fucker right off of the street and continues to fly into the air, hapless drunken Italian dangling half-way out of it's mouth, screaming like an effeminate black metal vocalist trying to imitate a condor. All rendered in the most pathetically fantastic CGI I've seen since the transformation scene in Dark Wolf. I'm talking N64 graphics. Yeah, that crappy/bitchin. Man, when the shark grabs him there's a sound like if an elephant stepped on an ostrich egg that was filled with jello molds of an orangutans cock. Jesus. I don't know how Stephen Baldwin keeps picking winners like this. It's incredible. He needs to give his agent a raise. That was, like, nine times cooler than the coolest thing I could ever think of, which would probably be... a werewolf boxing a unicorn. Imagine how cool that would be...times fucking nine - Your mind has officially just been raped.

There's a shark in there somewhere.

I can't even imagine what must be going through his head.

Before I started this movie, I had a thought. That thought was: "Man, I sure hope there's a scene in which a shark jumps out of a canal and to snatch a bystander off of the street." Guess what - There was. Strangely enough, this movie, no matter how bad it sucks, is consistently living up to and exceeding my expectations. I keep joking about things I'd like to see happen, never thinking that they actually will, and then they fucking do! Is this some kind of mystical, enchanted DVD that's reading my mind and projecting my deepest desires onto the screen? Given the gratuitous lack of a cinnamon colored big-foot humping an Asian nun while Metallica’s Harvester of Sorrow plays in the background I’m forced to assume no. It’s still pretty rad, though.

Stephen Baldwin's lady companion has been kidnapped by the Italian version of the mafia's elite team of ninja Hench-men. I’m not sure if they were ninjas or not, but they were dressed all in black and they kicked Baldwin’s ass, so they must have been.

I bet the master-mind behind the design for those gondolas never thought they'd need to be sturdy enough to survive a shark dive bomb. That's what happens when you lack foresight. You get people eaten by sharks. If he used walnut instead of mahogany that never would have happened.

Thrilling foot chase/shoot-out/chainsaw fight/beating. Dude's got a chainsaw and you choose to combat that with wood? Wood? You do know chainsaws were made to saw through wood, with a chain, right? That's their entire function and purpose. Oh well, no one ever said smarts were Stephen Baldwin's strong point.

What? He actually defeated a chainsaw with a wooden chair? That is one sturdy fucking chair. I guess it's true what they say about Venetian chair makers -- they're always ready to fight off a man with a chainsaw. I heard that somewhere, I think maybe when I was in Mexico back in 99’.

I don't know if this is showcasing how badass Stephen Baldwin is or how inept the Venice police force is. Maybe a bit of both.

Maybe it's just because it's 4:37 in the morning, but I'm kind of feeling like I would maybe enjoy it if this movie would end kind of soon.

Wouldn't it be awesome to make a quesadilla out of burritos? Yes. But it would be more awesome to eat it. Sorry, I just ate a burrito, my mind isn't in the right place.

+
= YUM

Holy shit. This Italian mobster put a bunch of baby great whites into the Venice canals so they would grow up to be his "watch dogs". His shark watch dogs. His watch sharks. I can't believe no one in Venice has figured that out in real life yet.

Stephen Baldwin. Forced to dive against his will into shark infested waters to retrieve a bunch of lost treasure from a cavern under Venice for a shark-happy crime lord. Stephen Baldwin, with an exploding-harpoon gun. Underwater with sharks.

And a claymore!

Stephen Baldwin just shot a great white with an aqua-missile.

This dude sent Baldwin and two of his lackeys underwater to get the treasure. One was killed by a shark (The lucky one), the other by Stephen Baldwin. To remedy the situation he decides to send MORE henchmen to swim through an army of sharks and then try to find and kill Stephen Baldwin. Somehow he's surprised when they die too.

"What the fuck happened?!"
Maybe all those fucking sharks you set free underwater are, I don't know? Fucking killing people or something? Sharks eat people every once and a while, actually. Yeah. Who knew?

These mafia henchmen must be remarkably well paid to jump into what basically amounts to an underwater maze filled to the brim with man-hungry sharks at the whims of their boss like this. Not even one of them has protested at all. No: "What? There’s sharks down there! Are you fucking crazy?" or “If you like sharks so much, you go get eaten by them”. When you think about it, they've got roughly a 50/50 chance of making it to the cavern, and a 40/60 chance of making it back; meaning the overall likelihood of death is like 118%. Can't argue with the numbers.

Hey hey! The Venetian SWAT team are engaging the mafia death squad in a thrilling gun battle. This would be better if the sharks were involved somehow. Like everyone is underwater shooting at each other with the sharks devouring everything in sight.

Just imagine they're underwater and there's sharks.

Nu Image - revealing the dark side of Discovery Channel stock footage since 1999.

That was actually a pretty decent shoot-out, for a Nu Image killer shark flick.

"I know, Captain, there are no sharks in Venice."
But, dude, there totally are sharks in Venice. That's the plot and title of the movie.

Exhibit A. That's Venice in the background FYI.