MEGA PIRANHA

 

WELL, LADIES, THERE'S NOTHING NOT TO LIKE ABOUT THIS ONE!

Mega Piranha is a 2010 release, the brainchild of writer/director Eric Forsberg.  It's 92 minutes of SHEER FUN.  It stars Paul Logan and someone named Tiffany, no last name.  The story begins when a boat full of fat, drunken men and their topless female companions, cruising on what the Shaved Monkeys call the Orinoco River, are consumed by SOMETHING TERRIBLE that sinks their boat by nibbling on it from the underside.  Even someone who showed up late and missed the opening credits will recognize the menace immediately:  GIANT, KILLER PIRANHAS. WILL ANYONE SURVIVE?

CLIFFIE'S NOTES ON THIS REMARKABLE EFFORT:

>> Logan's character is a Special Ops guy sent south of the border to investigate what seems to have been the explosion of a boat occupied by some sort of government bigwig. YOU HAVE TO LIKE THE FACT that his character's name is "Fitch," which is approximately the way Spanish speakers pronounce my favorite word in English, "Fish."  (Yes, they're in Brazil, but everyone there speaks Spanish.  Onwards.)  Logan succeeds at every moment in exuding pointless, steely-eyed intensity, whether he is introducing himself to an airport employee, driving a hatchback down a dusty road, or madly bicycling his legs in the air to deflect a flurry of GIANT, KILLER PIRANHAS.

>> Logan's character was sent on this terrifying mission by a government lackey played by none other than Barry Williams.  You may remember him as Greg from The Brady Bunch.  Williams succeeds at every moment in exuding mild bafflement as he barks into a cellphone at our musclebound hero.  What I especially like about him is the way he just yaps on and on about what is supposedly a top-secret mission, no matter where he is or who's standing nearby.  Is there a cab driver listening in?  Is Williams standing in the middle of a gaggle of panhandlers at the airport?  Is a detachment of low-level military personnel without security clearance goldbricking nearby and taking in every word?  TELL THEM EVERY DETAIL, BARRY.

>> Tiffany's character is extra awesome.  A scientist sent to the Orinoco to create bigger, faster, tougher Piranhas, she apparently also has PSYCHIC POWERS.  I know this because when Logan deposits a deceased GIANT, KILLER PIRANHA onto her workbench, she peeks into a tiny centimeter-deep slit on the underside of the victim and, without ANY ability to see what's in there, announces that the fish has triple-thick skin and three hearts, plus full equipment to produce a batch of fertile roe every few hours, without the fuss and bother of mating.  This weaponry is all news to her, although she just got through explaining that she was the one who created this new species.  What she never explains is why she might have decided to do such a thing in the first place.  I'm not that surprised; at every moment she exudes tiredness and disshevelment, with her hair going every whichaway, looking like she put on someone else's clothes that morning by mistake.  The scary thing is that she makes more sense than the whole rest of the scientific team put together.

>> The stars of the show, of course, are the GIANT, KILLER PIRANHAS.  They get as big as hot-air balloons in the course of a day or so in this story, and they like to fling themselves at people and buildings.  Whenever they penetrate the side of a warehouse or apartment complex, the whole place BLOWS UP, so maybe the fish themselves are rigged to explode.  If you bomb them, poison them or anything else, IT JUST PISSES THEM OFF.  One of the incoherent scientists on Tiffany's team explains that bombing them will cause "reproductions."  Um, OK.  The only solution?  DROWN THEM.  That's what I said.

>> This, in short, is just what humans expect of our operatives.  They expect us to eat them for lunch. And not just the humans themselves -- also their buildings, Navy destroyers, underground bunkers, pleasure boats, power plants and helicopters.  Because they think that's what fish want.  

>> Oh, and did I mention the GIANT, KILLER PIRANHAS can SWIM REALLY FAST?  The scientific team generates a computer model of the menace's epidemic spread, showing that within 3 days, at their current rate of growth, the killer fish will make it all the way to OHIO.   Can the total destruction of the Midwestern auto industry be far behind?

In short, ladies, this is the PERFECT FILM to conceal our real operations from prying human eyes.  While we make ourselves smaller, more numerous, more physically harmless, and more difficult to distinguish from Shaved Monkeys, they are anxiously scanning the horizon for maneaters as big as school buses, gnashing their teeth as they fly through the air at their doomed, screaming victims.  

I CANNOT RECOMMEND IT TOO HIGHLY.