Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Shark Attack in the Mediterranean (2004)


Synopsis: Devastated by the violent death of his wife, helicopter pilot Sven Hansen helplessly watches as his personal life and business unravel. He finds renewed hope on the exotic island of Mallorca until the day his peaceful life is rocked by the appearance of a gigantic 35-foot shark. When Hansen learns that this is the same monster that killed his wife, he teams up with attractive marine biologist Julia Bennett. Together they battle the beast in a dramatic fight for survival. Filled with nonstop, hair-raising surprises, SHARK ATTACK IN THE MEDITERRANEAN takes deep ocean terror to new depths!

I COULD FIND NO TRAILER FOR THIS MOVIE. ANYWHERE. I WILL MAKE THIS UP TO YOU IN A FEW PARAGRAPHS WITH 1 OF THE BEST MINUTES EVER RECORDED IN SHARK MOVIE HISTORY.

I'm starting to see a pattern here: The longer the synopsis for a movie, the higher your chances that you're about to watch a bad movie. Shark Attack in the Mediterranean is a shining example.

So you pick this to watch...thinking that maybe it has something to do with the amazingly terrible Shark Attack trilogy. It doesn't, we aren't that stupid. But you're kind of hoping for something along those lines. In a lot of respects, you do get just that.

I was immediately surprised that this movie was overdubbed in English. (apparently this is a German movie called Shark Alarm) And it's really poorly done English dubs. We're talking Riki-Oh levels of bad overdub. Like there's maybe one man and one woman overdubbing the entire movie for all the characters and they really don't bother to try and be separate characters. It honestly made me laugh a lot of the time and made this movie shoot up the "so bad it's good" ladder. Like this for example:

Ladies and Gentlemen, the greatest minute in shark movie history. Use it wisely.

Something that is SHOCKINGLY good is the directing. Maybe it doesn't all flow together the greatest but the director really has a knack for working in the small things to make the bigger thing that much better. Like a dude is about to be gloriously eaten and the camera zooms in on his eye and we get to see the shark launch out of the water at him from the glare on his eye. Stuff like that really made this movie interesting to watch.

Then there's scenes showing a rich fat man going on and on about his expensive grill to a pool full of bikini clad hot chicks while at the same time there is a car chase that results in the lead character launching off a cliff, jumping out of the jeep a la Fast 5, and then landing right in the pool.

THEEEEN there's the matter of the shark itself. So here we have another Megalodon, a supposedly extinct super shark. In the synopsis you read that they discover this shark is the shark that killed the lead character's wife. They find this out because he has a tooth from that attack and he finds a newer BIGGER tooth this time around that matches it exactly. Seriously, this tooth is about as big as your face. And the shark, even though the synopsis says it's 35 feet, looks more like 60. (YES!) And it's all CGI baby! Bad CGI? Compared to what I've reviewed lately, no not at all. It's not theatre bound quality of CGI but for a movie that no doubt went straight to DVD, it's excellent. (I would go so far as to say it's better than Deep Blue Sea) And it's refreshing at this point to watch something that isn't chock full of stock footage, especially stock footage of a regular shark when it's supposed to be a mega shark.

There's just so many aspects of badness to love in this movie. If you're looking for something good here, walk away right now. Not worth your time. But if you're looking for something that will just keep throwing eye rolling scene after eye rolling scene at you while at the same time getting crazy with the camera work...Shark Attack in the Mediterranean is for you.

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