Daily Archives: 02/21/2012

PIRANHA -United States-2010

Elisabeth Shue as Julie Forester

Adam Scott as Novak

Jerry O'Connell as Derrick Jones

Ving Rhames as Deputy Fallon

Jessica Szohr as Kelly

Steven R. McQueen as Jake Forester

Christopher Lloyd as Mr. Goodman

Richard Dreyfus as Matt Boyd

Directed by Alexandre Aja

Written by Peter Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg

Authors’ note- The following  commentary is a dramatization. I am going to be 50 soon, and that much is true. However, I am a happily married man and have never had opportunity or the need to watch a GGW video. This was all just a way of saying that I wish the director would have made up his mind. Boobs or blood, Mr. Aja, what’s it going to be?

I’m going to be 50 years old in a little under 2 weeks. Having never seen a Girls Gone Wild video in its entirety, I thought now would be as good a time as any. I went to the video store and I got this one that had this hot babe sunbathing on a red raft on what appears to be a peaceful lake. She’s all kicked back with her barely there bikini and her dark sunglasses covering her eyes. I took it home and I popped the disc in my trusty player and sat back to enjoy the bouncing hooters and gyrating buttocks. This one was a really good one! Woo hoo! It had a little something for everybody! There’s Kelly Brook and Riley Steele cavorting naked underwater like dolphins. There’s Jessica Sour looking all cute so that the younger male viewers can be happy. There’s even Elisabeth Shue in the film for the older viewers such as myself. It’s funny, though; they have her dressed as a sheriff in this one. But still, she’s really hot! It must have been some sort of role playing thing.

So, I’m enjoying all this girly action and all of a sudden these really mean fish with obscenely large teeth commence to chewing up and spitting out all the bodacious babes and voluptuous beauties. Pretty soon the whole thing breaks down in a shower of guts and gore. It’s not just the boobies that suffer; this one guy suffers such an emasculating injury before being chewed to pieces I can’t even mention it without wincing.

What the hell is this movie?!?  I thought for sure I’d picked up a Girls Gone Wild video. I hit pause and picked up the DVD case to examine it more closely. What do you know? My hand had covered up the cover earlier. There it was in big red letters-PIRANHA. I flipped the cover over and read the description. Oh, so this is supposed to be a horror film? In fact, it’s supposed to be a remake of the Joe Dante B-movie classic; which itself was a parody of Jaws. According to the credits, this one was directed by Alexandre Aja. Oh yeah, I thought, he directed High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes remake and they were really good. I don’t really know what to say about Piranha, though. Two things come to mind:

1. For a Girls Gone Wild movie, Alexandre Aja has made a pretty decent horror film.
2. For a horror film, Alexandre Aja has made a pretty decent Girls Gone Wild movie.

I guess it’s all in how you look at it.

TRIVIA

A TV spot was banned because it had too much gore, and it also revealed the ending to the movie.

 

“Girls Gone Wild” mogul Joe Francis wrote a letter to producers saying he was angry at the film because of Jerry O’Connell’s character who owns a site called “Wild Wild Girls” which is a spoof of the adult video line and that he might take legal action if “any defamatory or disparaging statements, or depictions, in the media or in the film itself, or other statements that portray Mr. Francis in a false light, will be met with swift litigation.”. After seeing the movie Francis went on saying “I appreciate a good parody as much as the next guy, but to associate me with drugs and the filming of underage girls crosses a definite line,” Francis said. “Jerry O’Connell has repeatedly and emphatically stated on the public record that he is ‘playing Joe Francis,’ not a fictional character based on me. Mr. O’Connell has done this despite having been warned by his own lawyers not to admit this.” In response O’Connell said “I get to play Joe Francis! Oh, wait. For legal reasons I’m supposed to say, ‘I play someone loosely based on Joe Francis.’”

 

This film marks the third time that director Alexandre Aja has directed a horror film remake. He previously directed The Hills Have Eyes and Mirrors, also remakes of earlier horror films.

 

 

 

Related articles

• Inside Horror: Episode 5 – Alexandre Aja Talks Maniac Remake and So Much More! (dreadcentral.com)
• Alexandre Aja to Direct Joe HIll’s Horror Story HORNS (geektyrant.com)
• PIRANHA 3DD – 2 International Posters (geektyrant.com)
• Filmmakers and Cast Debut Gruesome New Footage for PIRANHA 3D; Recap Along with Highlights From Q&A (collider.com)