"Sharknado" Did Not Blow Me Away

While reading this, please keep in mind that I have driven from Dallas to Austin, a five hour car trip, on two separate occasions to see “fun bad” movies. The first time was to see Al Adamson’s 1981 bad but fun masterpiece, “Carnival Magic.” The second time was to see the cheesy 1979 Scott Baio/Ron Palillo thrill ride, “Skatetown U.S.A.” I had never seen either film prior to these separate trips. I was glad I went to both screenings. Had I turned on “Sharknado” and began watching it by myself, there is a zero percent chance I would have stuck with it after the first ten minutes, however, I would have driven five minutes to my friend’s house to tell him not to waste his time with it.

“Sharknado” doesn’t have any of those car driving up on the curb kind of awkward moments. It is not bad enough. It is not funny enough. The point here is that I willingly seek out bad movies, movies that are famous for being bad. I fully realize that the makers of “Sharknado” were attempting to make a tongue in cheek film. One simply can hear the title of the film and understand what he or she is in for. The thing is that when you plan on making a tongue-in-cheek film, it is always a good idea to add some humor and make the thing funny. Take a film like “Cabin in the Woods.” In this film, Joss Whedon successfully lampoons everything silly and stupid about slasher movies and any other kind of “dead teenager movie,” as Siskel and Ebert called these “Friday the 13th” clones of the 1980’s and the current resurgence of the “dead teenager movie.” DON’T READ THE BOOK OUT LOUD!! DON’T READ IT AT ALL! NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS WHEN YOU READ THE BOOK OUT LOUD!! Whedon’s mocking of this genre is spot-on. “Sharknado” is a bad movie, but it fails at being bad. “The Room,” “Samurai Cop,” “Birdemic,” and “R.O.T.O.R.” are examples of movies that are successful at being bad. These four films did not set out to be bad, they were just so awkward that their awkwardness make them entertaining. You could use the saying, “it’s like watching a train wreck,” though I’d rather watch “The Room” than watch a train wreck. I would, however, prefer watching a train wreck over watching “Sharknado” again. “Sharknado” is one of the first films I have watched during which I honestly could not care less what was going on during the thing. It is full of inconsistencies. Whether or not these inconsistencies are intentional or not is up for debate. If the filmmakers were intentionally mismatching the sky in various shots, intentionally adding horrible lines of dialogue, creating horrible CGI sharks and tornados, this would imply that they had written a clever and funny script, which is not the case. While watching this film, I felt as though the makers of it didn’t give two shits about the audience. It felt as if they thought the audience was stupid and that a half-ass effort would be good enough. I am retaliating by intentionally writing a half-ass review for it. I did have fun watching “Sharknado” with two groups of friends, however, the fun was had due to the fact that my friends were with me, not so much “Sharknado.” I am glad I saw it as it satisfied my curiosity and I was looking forward to watching it due to all of the social media hype surrounding it. By no means did “Sharknado” blow me out of the water, but it certainly did blow.