There's been a small boost of shark movies in recent years with The Shallows and 47 Meters Down the last few years and they have been decent cable-watch or streaming films at best. But, not one shark movie has reached the masterful level of Steven Spielberg's blockbuster classic, Jaws, which in turn, Spielberg's film was paying an homage to Alfred Hitchcock and his movies. But, almost every director is helming a shark movie in tribute to Spielberg's Jaws. A few shark movies like Deep Blue Sea, for example, are entertaining on its own than rather paying an homage to a classic film. Even though The Meg tries to aim to become an entertaining shark B-movie, despite a couple of fun, cheesy moments, the movie fails to be a total product by trying too hard in achieving two tones at once.
A group of scientists is operating and spearheading an underwater research facility called Mana One. They are conducting an experiment near the ocean floor involving bypassing a peculiar hydrogen that is the beneath the surface. Celeste (Jessica McNamee), Toshi (Masi Oka) and "The Wall" (Olafur Darri Olaffson), while piloting a small submarine, are attacked and stranded by something large at first, losing contact with Mana One. After not getting anywhere and after much debate, Mac (Cliff Curtis) thinks they should call former professional diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) because of his experience in diving in deeper territories of the ocean. But, because of an incident five years ago, Dr. Heller (Robert Taylor) is against it but decides to call him.
Jonas agrees to help out the three scientists in the submersible as Suyin (Li Bingbing) offers to help too. Suyin is attacked by a giant squid which is in turn is killed by the culprit, a 75-foot prehistoric monster shark called the Megolodon. The shark is the identical one that Jonas saw five years ago, proving his sanity. The shark attacks the submarine and kills one of the people and also the event triggers Heller to apologize to Jonas for not believing him.
I wanted a wackier, R-rated, bloody and fun entertaining shark movie that closed the summer with such joy. But, The Meg does not deliver in department in fun. The movie does not deliver in character development, story or tone. I did not believe the characters as people that I would depend on in reality but that is when the tonal inconsistency kicks in. You can see some of the actors including Statham chewing the scenery but sometimes, the serious tone will set off the scene and it does not quite fit. Also, its story is not that exciting nor suspenseful because it depended on more of the seriousness and science. But, the bottom line is the movie does not know what it wanted to be.
The sharks were cool and the stars of the movie as they were terrifying and menacing and wanted to take you on a thrill ride. But, the problem is that the humans provided some trouble for the shark whereas the shark was the villain in other shark movies. The humans are jerks in this movie causing some problems for the plot. Speaking of which, every performance except two are ridiculous as they recite some dialogue in an unnecessary comedic way or react badly to certain events. Jason Statham and Cliff Curtis are the only actors who are giving decent, committed performances maybe persuading to buy into the movie and its adventure. The characters were either underdeveloped, cliched or just ideas that did not work with the movie. I mean, Rainn Wilson is a talented actor but his performance and banter did not work here and Ruby Rose is terrible in her role trying to reach the level of acting of delivering in her emotional scenes.
Director Jon Turteltaub is a solid choice for this kind of movie as he delivered in adventurous fare like the National Treasure movies but his direction is quite noticeable as the whole movie felt unbalanced and not as fun. It seemed difficult to be attentive to the science and the characters when the movie tries to start as serious with its science and the execution of the story but it gets more silly and cartoonish as the movie gets further along. If it were rated R and knew what to do with itself, it could have reached the level of a solid B-movie entertainment like Piranha. But, because of the terrible screenplay and the underwhelming performances, this movie is shark bait to the wrong audiences who want serious tone and to the wrong audiences who want pure fun.
**
Comments
Post a Comment