"Sharknado 2 - The Second One"
The only way to get through an East Coast "Sharknado" is to savor the excess. So many sharks. So many cameos. So little coke to snort to get me through it. So much promotional ballyhoo.
Yes, “Sharknado 2: The Second One” arrived on Wednesday night on the SyFy channel, your home for quality family viewing, and this time the great whites are raining down on the Great White Way. Actually, who knows what species the precipitating sharks are, and quite a lot of the mayhem takes place in Queens (fuck Queens, as long as they stay away from Central Park West), but judging from the advance coverage (“ Sharknado 2 - Ready to Take Bite Out of Big Apple”) it’s illegal to write about this movie without making a bad pun, so I wanted to get that out of the way early.
Sorry, I couldn't help myself. *snorts another line of coke*
You know its got to be good just by the name....Sharknado 2: The Second One? What in the Wide Wide World of FUCK network exec thought that one up? The could have done so much fucking better. I can see it on the marquis now.....
"Sharks on a Plane", or "The Good the Bad and The Sharks", or "Godzilla Meets the Sharks".
I mean come on SyFy!! Next thing you know I'll be giving titles to my orgasms!
Anyway, if you have inexplicably missed the mania of last summer, here is how we arrived at this moment. A year ago we were plodding through a relatively ordinary television summer until July 11, when SyFy, a niche cable channel (run by Pirates) whose programming normally has no effect on anything other than to give jobs to actresses who keep failing 30-day rehab with great tits and guys with six-pack abs (did I say I was complaining?), broadcast “Sharknado” and rocked the world. The gist of that deliberately cheesy movie: Sharks sucked up into the atmosphere by tornadoes start falling on Los Angeles, and they’re kind of angry, and a guy named Fin (Ian Ziering) saves the day with a chain saw. At least it wasn't San Francisco and the Monterey Peninsula...Thank God!.
Last time we saw Ian Ziering he was trying to get a diploma from Beverly Hills High in "Beverly Hills 90210". Did the fucker ever graduate? Get a GED?
I always laugh when I stumble onto a rerun of that show and I see the clan gathered at the "Peach Pit" restaurant for bad burgers and soggy fries. Almost gets your mouth watering to go through the drive thru at McDonalds to pick up a sack of McRib's, doesn't it?. That name Peach Pit keeps ringing a bell that makes me want to put out my eyes with red hot screw drivers. There's my main insult for this article. Sorry Mickey D's. Anyway, back to this film masterpiece.
Something about “Sharknado” made people crazy, and the movie became the cult phenomenon of that summer and beyond. Naturally, there would be a sequel, and, of course, the shark storm this time would be visited upon New York. Why New York you ask? Omaha was closed!
Just to be on the safe side I have got in some extra cases of shark repellent and I have noted they covered my apartment building in Central Park West with the shit so I feel safe. We here in Central Park West intend on standing up to the shark menace even if the pussies in Brooklyn run for Jersey.
SyFy, an NBCUniversal property, had been promoting “Sharknado 2” relentlessly, and who can blame it? If you’re a secondary cable channel and have a chance to distinguish yourself from the scores of others, you’d better take it. and what better to do it with than a shark storm. As Al Roker (gives a great cameo as himself, deserving of a Best Supporting Actor Emmy along with Matt Lauer) says in the movie "This is a twister ... with teeth!". I shit you not!
The underlying philosophy, with the promotion and the film itself, seems to have been that when you have a movie about a shark rainstorm, there’s no such thing as overkill. That’s almost true. “Sharknado 2” intends to be nothing more than dumb fun, and it succeeds well enough at that. But it also leaves you regretting that the “Sharknado” team (Anthony C. Ferrante again directed from a script by Thunder Levin) didn’t reach for camp greatness.
I'm sure we're in for some great future Syfy "classics": Sharktopus, Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus, and . . . "Mansquito." The titles tell you all you need...Oh wait! They've already done those? Love ya SyFy!
I would have preferred "Sharknado vs. The Pirates." We pirates are used to fending off sharks. What'd you expect me to say? Sharknado vs Ninji Fuckers? Everyone knows ninjis hate water.
As the movie opens, Fin and his ex-wife, April (Tara Reid), are flying into Kennedy International Airport to promote a book about the 2013 Sharknado (I know, Tara Reid writing a book, I shit you not) when the plane passes through a Sharknado of its own, to disastrous effect. And, yes, for those keeping track, that is the second unpleasant TV landing at Kennedy this summer. The planeload of dead passengers that began “The Strain” on FX also touched down there. Kelly Osbourne demonstrates remarkable composure just before she gets her head sawed off by a toothy beast. Ziering will FLY THE PLANE. Tara Reid masters litle-kid-crying-face. Will she become JFK tarmac roadkill? SHE LOSES A HAND. REPEAT: TARA REID'S HAND IS GONE. Ziering is a regular ol' "Sully" Sullenberger. Avast ye matey, Reid just became the new Captain Hook!
Fin tries to warn New York about the coming storm. New York doesn’t listen. And then comes an outlandish, chaotic collection of scenes featuring sharks on subways, sharks on skyscrapers, sharks on city streets, sharks in pizza joints. A Mets game in Queens is a particular focus (sorry Mets fans, Yankees rule!). EF5 SHARKNADO ON THE UPPER EAST SIDE! Roker's got the science down pat! Cold air meets warm air meets Sharknado!
The movie is full of recognizable stars in small roles, and since spotting them is one of its main pleasures, they won’t be identified here except to say that the pilot of that plane has been a pilot before (Robert Hays from 'Airplane"), and the cabby who gets Fin to the ballpark has a fair amount of experience (Judd Hirsch from 'Taxi" - he's awesome).
Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t really do anything truly memorable with all these guests, as if just getting these actors to show up were enough. That’s largely true of the sharks as well. At lease Tara Reid showed up clean and sober, although judging from her performance there aren't enough bottles available for her to pee in.
I suppose now I should review Sharknado 1.....let me do another line of coke first....
