Buy Sharknado 2: The Second One
So, it was the live Rifftrax version of this movie that I saw, but I thought I’d just comment on the film itself. I really loved the first Sharknado as a bad movie that was so awful it became a lot of fun, maybe even great. I don’t think you even need Rifftrax on board to make the first Sharknado worth watching. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for this one; in fact, I felt like even the Rifftrax guys couldn’t really save it. I guess I feel like the problem here is that this movie is in on the joke to a degree the first wasn’t. Now, the people making the first movie did not think they were making a great movie, but they weren’t constantly winking at the audience about what a bad movie it was and most of the really good “bad” moments were just completely earnest (like that whole bit about the emergency services being “second to none” as just one example). But this movie is just a real stroke-fest, constantly getting off on its own cleverness. The celebrity cameos are just dreadful, frankly; I wasn’t sure I had any respect for Matt Lauer left to lose, but apparently I did. And the movie really just has one joke which is that a shark suddenly lunges into frame and dispatches someone in a spray of gore. Unfortunately, this movie operates under the assumption that if it’s funny three times, then it’s funny thirty times. And it just gets old and predictable. The first Sharknado worked because so many moments were genuinely surprising; the helicopter-shark leap was just amazing and hilarious – but this film has no moments like that. This movie does have a couple of things working for it, namely Ian Ziering, who is still giving a really earnest and likable performance. He’s treating the foolishness seriously, which is why it works; camp only works with a straight face. The other is Tara Reid who remains one of the most unbelievably awful actresses on the planet; watching her attempt to express human emotion with her face is one of the most compellingly hilarious things I’ve ever seen and she gets some great moments, albeit not nearly as many as she did in the first one. This movie is bad, but not in an entertaining way; I don’t think you can make an entertainingly bad movie deliberately. A bad movie becomes entertaining when it’s earnest, I guess. Anyway, try to make a movie that’s both fun & bad . . . you end up with only the latter. Warned against. 1 star.
tl;dr – sequel is too self-aware to recapture any of the charm and hilarity of the more earnest original; bad without being good-bad. 1 star.