Skip to main content

Maybe Shark

 

Before you watch Meg 2 : The Trench you need to ask yourself one question, do I like giant sharks tearing stuff up? If the answer is yes then this might not be the film for you.

The first Meg film was something of a sleeper hit, suggesting people quite like watching giant sharks. The marketing for this film suggests the studio know people quite like giant sharks but they don't seem to have passed that information along to the people actually making the film since, after a brief introduction, the megs (and the cool giant octopus from the trailer) are mostly relagated to final part of the movie.

Instead what you get is a series of bland, human focused, action set pieces. There's some dimly lit plodding through the titular trench, like a less good version of 2020's Underwater. Then there's some guys with guns running around a research station like a really crap Die Hard. Even the creature focused final act focuses as much on some dog sized land lizards (evolution has left them with legs despite millions of years confined to life underwater) giving the impression of a lame Jurassic Park.

To be fair Jason Statham at least looks like he is having fun, especially when he gets to play around on jetski. He is joined by Wu Jing (basically the Chinese Jason Statgam) who is also enjoying himself despite the limited script. In fact all the cast do pretty well with what they are given.

With the previous film taking a large bite out if the Chinese box office, The Trench doubles down on appealing to the same market. In addition to the casting the story is very China friendly, the bad guys are comically evil capitalists and while The Stath gets to kick ass it's teamwork that ultimately wins the day. Some people seem to really hate it when a big movie aims for an audience outside North America but personally I enjoy the slightly different flavour and it certainly is not the main issue here. That remains the lack of OTT fun.

The Meg 2 is in on its own joke it just doesn't tell it loud enough.

5 paddling puppies out of 10

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Fall and Get Back Up Guy

  The Fall Guy is a is hard movie to slap a genre on. It's an action film. It's a rom-com. It's an old fashioned star vehicle. The result is a very entertaining but niche $130 million love letter to the stunt community that leans hard on two insanely charismatic leads. In fairness, calling  Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt co leads is a bit of a stretch as it is really the story of Gosling's stunt man Colt Seavers. He begins the film loved up with camera women Jody Moreno (Blunt) before an accident at work causes him to lose confidence in himself and ghost her. Eighteen months later he gets a call asking him to come out of stunt exile to help on Jody's directorial debut but things don't work out as he hoped when Jody doesn't actually want him there and he is roped into tracking down the productions missing leading man, an ab flaunting, obnoxious idiot played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Gosling is in full movie star mode here, buffed up and charismatic even though
Post a Comment
Read more

Horoscopes and Horror Tropes

  Catching a film like Tarot in the cinema in 2024 is weird. It feels like one of those horror films that just sort of appear on a streaming service. One you find deep in bowels of Amazon Prime, take a chance on and are pleasantly surprised to find is more or less fine. Up on the big screen it's still fine but its shortcomings are made very apparent. To its credit the film wastes no time in getting to the point. It begins with seven friends in a mansion they rented for one of their birthdays and within the first ten minutes main character Haley has read the group their fortunes from a cursed deck of tarot cards they find in the basement. Once they return home the friends begin to be picked off one by one courtesy of a ghost/monster taking the shape of whichever card was drawn in their reading. Exactly how they kill them is a bit muddled, at first it seems they are scaring their victims into "Final Destination" ing themselves but at other times they become more hands (or s
Post a Comment
Read more

The Unbearable Cage of Massive Cage

 Given he has a reputation for being eccentric but, crucially, in no way problematic, Nicolas Cage is in the fairly unique position of being able to star as himself in a film that both has fun with and pays homage to his unique legend. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a love letter to a one of a kind career stuffed with references (although not particularly deep cuts) and also an accomplish piece of work in its own right. Cage has a blast playing various incarnations of himself and so does Pedro Pascal as his number one fan, wannabe movie maker and potential cartel boss. Pretty much any time the two of them are on screen together is gold, as is any appearance by Cage as "Nicky", an arrogant younger version of the actor unhappy with his older self's lack of movie star cred. On the downside, not every actor gets so much to work with. Sharon Horgan is very much a standard disapproving estranged wife and given his relationship with his family is such a big part of N
Post a Comment
Read more