It is hard to intellectually grasp that Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus is in the same artistic field as Spartacus, but they are. Yesterday we celebrated Fish’s birthday with food, friends, and a bad movie. The film, at her request was Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. The movie was produced by the company The Asylum, which noted fort making cheap rip-off titles of major films Included from their productions slate, Transmorphers, The Terminators, and I am Omega. Their budgets are quite low and the it is the bane of modern film making that digital effect truly are within anyone’s reach. Note I did not state that GOOD digital effects are within anyones reach, for big screen high def digital you still need real money.

Mega Shark stars Deborah Gibson as the worlds dumbest Marine Biologist, Lorenzo Lamas as mysterious, cliche spouting, government agent, Sean Lawlor as washed exposition professor,  and Vic Chao as locked eyebrow love interest.

The point at which teh audience will know that they are in for and Ed Wood level of disastrous movie-making will depend on the audiences attention to detail or basic knowledge of marine life. IT might be when they spot loads of stock underwater footage from the bleedin’ tropic being used for Arctic waters, or it might be when they notice that clueless marine biologists as no nail-polish in wide-shots, but dark heavy nail-polish in close ups, or it might even be the terribly non-issue sunglasses worn by military pilots. However they become aware the audience will be ignorant of how truly awful the product will become.

As you can see from the image above the scale of the shark is something more associated with Japan than San Francisco. The shot was followed by a shot from directly above the bridge. Stock footage of traffic on the bridge into which that superimposed their shark biting through the driveway. Because it was stock footage the cars continued to roll along ignoring the shark. Apparently nothing will interrupt bay area commuters.

Mind the plot is equally mind-numbing. The above scene was one where the heros were attempting to capture the shark and corral it in SF bay for study. Better yet it was going to be a secret and not one would know. Yes the film is that stupid.

We had a grand time watching this film, but that’s because we had become Joel and the ‘bots. Do not attempt watching this film alone.