Review: Sharknado (2013)

I have been wanted to watch this ever since I saw the huge crowd gathering round a huge Sharknado: The Second One stand at San Diego Comic Con with hundreds of people wearing shark hats, it all looked very excited.  I had already heard that Sharknado was going to be the next cult hit but I had to see it for myself and I had to get Allie involved!! "Oh yay...lucky me..." I thought when Jenna text me. Part of me still wanted to see it though!

The film follows bar owner Finlay 'Fin' Shepard (Ian Zierling) who is desperate to save his ex-wife and daughter when a hurricane hits Los Angeles.  Him along with his bar tender Nova (Cassie Scerbo), his best friend Baz (Jaason Simmons) and the local drunk George (John Heard) jump in the car and head inland to find his family.  That is until the hurricane turns into three tornadoes which happen to be picking up sealife (namely sharks) from the ocean and dropping them all over Los Angeles. This sounds like such a professional plot explanation, and I couldn't help but laugh reading it!

We went into this with our eyes open. we knew it was going to be visually rubbish and that the dialogue was going to be cheesy and cringeworth and even that there would be excessive continuity errors, and we were not disappointed.  Nevertheless, all these issues (many of which we pointed out in mock hysteria throughout the film) made it utterly entertaining and gripping.  There was no way I was going to turn this off, I had to see how it ended (note the ending is by far the worst/best part of the whole movie!) and I was amazed and laughed my ass off.  Can you really ask for more from a movie? 

I don't think I've ever had so much fun watching a movie. This absolutely has to be watched with someone else so you can both shout at the characters doing stupid things, and the weather report for panicking about a massive storm when actually, there's clear blue skies outside and it's not even raining!

The acting was terrible, Tara Reid being particularly awful (didn't she used to be able to act at least a little bit?!) and the script was laughable but he only part that actually bothered me was Claudia (Aubrey Peeples) what an irritating little character.  They are being rained on by sharks and tornados, her brother is offering to save Los Angeles and she is just wingeing because everyone 'puts her second' and then appears happy when tragedy strikes.  Just shut up and get eaten by a flying shark already!! There was literally a moment when it looked like her brother was going to die and she smiled! Smiled! How rude!

My biggest annoyance was the continuity errors but they were so bad that it actually made it funny.  Rain, no rain, wipers, no wipers, surrounded by sharks, pan out no water, clear water surrounding the car, zoom out and its mucky tsunami water.  30 second clips that involve 12 changes in weather make it laughable but laughing I was and that makes me happy so I can't really fault them to trying to make this terrible movie on such a low budget.  The story was ludicrous and the complete disregard for the laws of physics could not have been  success as a big budget blockbuster but as a cult B-movie, its perfect.

I actually think without the continuity errors to make fun of, this film would just be no fun at all. It's well and truly awful, and you need things to poke fun of to make it enjoyable!

If you don't believe me, see it for yourself.  Invite all your friends round and laugh until you cry.

This is so hard to score, I know it's not as good as 7/10's I have posted previously from a film making perspective but from an enjoyment perspective it's well up there so I left it at 7 but half of me wanted to go higher and the other half wanted to drop it down to rate it alongside the other films I have reviewed.  Tough call!

Seriously, how can you actually give Sharknado a score out of 10? We're not like Empire here, we don't score films solely on their plot, acting, effects etc, we take into account how much we actually enjoyed the film too, but how can I give a final score where the profession side is 0/10 and the enjoy-ability factor is a 10/10? I think I just answered my own question.