Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus (2009)

It took me just a little longer to get a new post here than I had planed, but hopefully it was worth the wait. I decided to find a movie I didn’t know was out yet, until I had read about it on another blog. Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus created a stir when the trailer was released to Youtube. You could see that it wasn’t going to be the greastest film ever made, but everyone was wishing it to be a great “so bad it’s good” type film. When the trailer shows (all the good parts) such things as mega shark chomping on planes and bridges, along with other things, it was hard to not at least laugh at it. Once I learned it is now out there, I rushed to the rental store. To my surprise, they had two copies of the DVD. Which is actually two copies more than I thought they would have.

In Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, we meet up with Emma MacNeil (Deborah Gibson, yes the singer). Emma has a job that deals with the ocean, I don’t remember what her title was, and neither can anyone else it seems. Anyway, she is in a mini-sub type thing, that she took without asking by the way, with a budy of her’s. They are checking out what the whales are up to under the ice, when a low frequency sonar type thingy gets dropped in the water. This messes with the whales, sending them crashing into the ice, which just happens to have a frozen giant octopus and mega shark. What are the chances? The whales or the sonar, or maybe it was Emma’s stare, frees the two somehow. Even though they have been frozen for a very long time, they wake up within a few seconds and off they go. Of course Emma doesn’t actually believe what she saw, until a whale washes up that has a very large shark tooth in it, that happens to look nothing like a shark tooth. She recruits her former teacher, Lamar (Sean Lawlor), who then is contacted by Dr. Shimada (Vic Chao), because he believes an oil platform was attacked by the giant octopus. It was, and the only person that lived was the only American working on it. Anyway, we now have a team! Now the American goverment wants these two things stoped, because they are destoring everything in their paths. That is where Allan Baxter (Lorenzo Lamas) comes in.

With this kind of movie, you know it is going to be silly. The question remains though, will it be silly good? Or silly bad? Either way you know it isn’t going to be a good movie, just a movie that you can, hopefully, have fun with. It doesn’t take long before you notice things like stupid CGI effects, and that Emma apparently only wears nail polish on one hand. These things, and other silly stuff like it, are things I was expecting though. While the film did make me laugh at times, I was disappointed by it at the same time. As much as I enjoy funny and stupid dialog, the real reason to watch this film is to see the mega shark and giant octopus. This is actually where the film fails. We do get to see the mega shark try to eat different things, even though it makes no sense as to the damage he does, or doesn’t cause. It can bit through some things, but not other things you would expect that it could. So we get to see the mega shark here and there, and cause a lot of damage to things. The giant octopus, on the other hand, gets very little screen time. I’m assuming that might be because there would be more CGI effects involved when it comes to the octopus, so they don’t show it as often. It would have been nice to watch it cause more damage as well, like the cruise ship we see on the DVD cover. It is interesting what one can learn from movies like this. When something drops off the radar or sonar screen, it is natural to assume the target has been destoried. Mega sharks and giant octopus can grab a plane out of the sky. The shark can supposedly swim as fast as a plane can fly, but it sometimes has trouble catching up to subs and mini-subs. Oh, I can’t forget the most important thing, “Those guys have been frozen in ice for millions of years. Wouldn’t you be a little horny?”

All the effects are the CGI kind. From the big shark and octopus, right down to the small explosions, it is all done with some CGI work. While I have watched movies with much worse CGI work, it isn’t the state of the art work being done for this film either. As CRwM noticed, at And Now The Screaming Starts, the shark seems to get bigger as the movie goes on. Another draw back with the effects, is that they tended to use the same CGI effect over and over again. It might be a little different at times, like a slightly different camera angle on it. The acting wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. This was the first time I have watched Debora Gibson as an actress. I didn’t think she was outstanding, but she did surprise me a little bit. I’m sure it is hard to act in a movie like this one though. You know it isn’t going to be a great film, and more than likely not a lot of people are going to watch it. While not everyone was doing a good job with their roles, overall it wasn’t all that bad.

One of the things that bugged me bad about this film, was when they went into the lab to try and find a way to lure the shark and octopus to a certain location. Why did this bother me? For one thing, I couldn’t figure out what they were trying to make in a lab that could lure these two where they wanted. Second thing was, all they appeared to be doing is mixing one chemical with another, looking at it, and shaking their heads in disappointment. Having been in a lab many, many times, I know there is a lot more to things than just pouring one chemical into another. This is all they appeared to be doing, and for a good long time at that. Of course this eventually leads to two of the characters wondering off for a little sex time, which leads Emma to the solution to their problem, pheromones! Of course this works because they happen to know the sex of the shark, and his buddy the octopus right? So that is Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus in a nut shell. I thought it was a little too stupid in order to be very funny. It had its moments, but didn’t hold up as well I as I was hoping it was going to. If it had more shark and octopus going around destorying things for the hell of it, it would have been a lot more fun.

2 out of 5 I think the octopus should sue for equal screen time