Mali-BOOOO! (Live Movie Blog)

Clearly I haven't learned my lesson yet, because I am once again back with another live movie blog. Tonight I will be taking on Malibu Shark Attack, a Sci Fi SyFy original movie that aired for the first time about a month or so ago, but which I am just not getting around to watching. Even though it's the movie out of that marathon I am most looking forward to, I'm also very nervous that it will suck. Spring Break Shark Attack was wildly successful at creating a good shark movie, and I loved it, and this one seems, at least I hope, to have that kind of potential. All I want is a realistic, well-done shark movie. I don't even need great acting, and don't need great effects. Just be realistic, and don't be stupid. Please. Think of the children.

- Ok, before the opening credits even roll, we see a shark eat a grouper, and then that shark gets eaten by a much bigger shark. This leads me to believe we are going to be dealing with some some of freakishly large shark, so you can probably thrown out my hope of a realistic movie right away. Nothing like crushing my dreams in the first ten seconds.

- Our main characters look to all be life guards so far. Remember Baywatch? Nicole Eggert was the hottest one.

- Shit. I just read the DirectTV summary for this: An Earthquake unleashes huge, prehistoric sharks that terrorizes the California coast. Great.

- We just saw a pack of these prehistoric sharks, and they look like goblin sharks. Now while that might be the coolest name for an animal ever, it's a curious choice for an antagonist animal in a movie. Yes, they look scary, but their max length is only about 10 feet and they are skinny for their size (max weight = 350 lbs., like your mom) and as such have very little power. They also don't attack humans, and usually eat small fish and squid (note: not the giant kind). They also aren't prehistoric, they actually live now. I now this because I spent an hour a while back watching a documentary called, "Quest for the Goblin Shark" on The Science Channel. And they found one. And they accidentally get caught in nets all the time. Not prehistoric. Photo evidence:

Scary looking? Yes. A danger to humans? No. Prehistoric? No.

- Oh, and also they don't travel in schools. Mother F. We're five minutes in and already set a record for scientific inaccuracies.

- I just found out I'm going to be able to go to the opening game at TCF Bank Stadium. I'm not exactly the world's biggest college football fan, but I'm pretty stoked.

- One of the female lifeguards looks like Maggie Gyllenhaal if she died her hair blonde and then injected an assload of testosterone into her body while smoking a carton of cigarettes.

- Holy god the acting in this is maybe the worst we've had yet. At least a cute blonde girl finally showed up. And we've already had three shark-related fatalities. Plus, it's on a beach so there's lots of bikinis running about. But still, the acting. Oof.

- Some dude who looks like Michael Madsen just proposed to some old lady life guard. This guarantees the old lady lifeguard is going to be the heroine. You watch.

- Some teenages are now drinking beer and going parasailing, which, if they had watched some other shark movie I can't remember right now, they would know that parasailing is a good way to get chomped by a shark. Which, by the way, are now definitely confirmed as goblin sharks after a few close ups. This is so weird. There are plenty of really scary and awesome sharks out there, but they go with a small, harmless shark and magically give it not only the aggression, but the tools to kill people.

I get why you might not want to do Great Whites, which have been done to death, but why not switch to the Tiger? That thing is totally wicked awesome, but Spring Break Shark Attack is the only movie to feature it. The Bull Shark attacks more people than any other shark, but as far as I know, the only movie made featuring a bull is something called Red Water, starring Kristy Swanson and Mr. Belding (and which I can't find on tv, ever). The point is you don't have to give a species attributes it doesn't possess just because it has a cool name - there are tons of cool sharks still waiting for movies to be made about them.

- During all that those kids what were parasailing got eaten. And now there was another earthquake and there is a tsunami alert. That's another thing that's been bugging me; why do all these shark/croc/squid movies feel the need to toss in a natural disaster, too? When Luke and Han got all effed up in Empire Strikes Back, they didn't feel the need to have a cyclone come whipping into Cloud City.

- Cute blonde girl is now in a bikini top, and she's running down the beach with a young male lifeguard who I am going to call Tackleberry. She is very bouncy and very natural. He runs like a fag. Seriously. You know that kid in elementary school who didn't have the coordination enough to even run and kind of looked special at Track & Field Day running the 50 meters? Like that, but with more gay.

- Preceeding the Tsunami, a Goblin Shark washes up on the beach in front our lifeguards. Somehow old lady lifeguard is smart enough to identify it as a Goblin Shark, but also goes with the, "they are supposed to be extinct" followed in the next sentence by "they are really rare." Which is it, lady? Extinct, or rare? Because you can't have both. And, as discussed earlier, they aren't supposed to be extinct. Not even a little bit. Stop lying.

- I just looked up that blonde girl, and her name is Chelan Simmons. She's done a lot of work, but nothing that really stands out with the exception of Stephen King's It, in which she played the little girl who gets killed first when Pennywise returns. I suppose I should supply a picture (not of when she was a little girl, pervo).



- The tsunami has hit the life guard tower with our heroes still in it. Luckily, it hit with the force of someone taking a bucket of water and tossing it at the tower. Unluckily, it seems the entire beach is now underwater, and they are trapped in the tower (which is half-submerged). I'm guessing this is where the sharks come in.

- There's also a house near the beach where a bunch of construction workers are trapped now too. There was some whole sub-plot going on with them but I wasn't really paying attention so I don't know what it was. Seems better for all of us that way.

- That hot blonde chick got her leg whacked and is now bleeding . the blood which is seeping into the water and attracting the thought-to-be-extinct goblin sharks. The goblin sharks OF DOOM.

- It seems she needs stitches, but since they're trapped the only possibility is to have the manly Maggie Gyllenhaal stitch her up with needle and thread. Ouch. This girl is quite the screamer. Tackleberry is either grossed out or turned on - he's not exactly the king of emoting through facial expressions.

- Wow. Way to drag out a scene of a chick getting stitches for 20 minutes in a god damn shark movie. And this chick is way less hot now. What a whiner. Talk about high maintenance. She's the J-Lo of shark movie chicks.

- Speaking of high maintenance, I miss Super Sioux Fan.

- I still can't get over pack-hunting, aggressive, human-killing goblin sharks. Which by the way are continually circling this life guard stand because a couple of drops of blood fell in the water a half hour ago.

- Oh for christ's sake. The old lady life guard, the one who identified these sharks as "extinct" goblin sharks, just told one of the other life guards that they are "the same species as the Great White." First of all, goblin sharks aren't related to great whites in the slightest, except they both have the word "shark" in their name and both live in the ocean. Second, if goblin sharks were the same species as Great Whites, they'd just be Great Whites. Great white is it's own species, as is goblin shark. As is cat. And dog. That sentence is like saying, "Hey, that cow is the same species as that spider." I'm going to kill this movie.

- And now they use echo-location to find their prey. Like bats. Which, I think this goes without saying, is completely untrue in every way. If you're going to completely make stuff up, I'd go with a shark whose fins were actually chainsaws.

- Sentence just uttered, "this is a species of shark that hasn't been seen in millions of years." Even Mrs. W laughed at that one, and said, "Didn't we just watch a documentary on this kind of shark?" Yes. Yes we did. We were lucky we caught that one. It's not often you get to see footage of a creature that hasn't been seen in millions of years.

- Remember the part where I mentioned that the old lady lifeguard just got engaged so she would end up living until the end? Well the sharks must have echo-located her standing in the guard tower, because they rammed it from the bottom and then ate the crap out of her. So yeah, I was way off. They were probably pissed from all the disinformation and false rumors she was spreading about them.

- I would try to describe how dumb this scene just was, but I seriously don't have the words.

- Hm. It seems the construction people in that house are unaware of our little shark problem, because some chick just decided to go swim to the mainland to try to find a boat. Well, let's just say the construction workers are fully aware of the sharks now.

- Oh, and I guess they can jump now because they just got another construction guy who was standing on the dock. Mrs. W is currently cackling out loud at the effects in this movie. I haven't touched on them yet, but they are wretched. I think Jaws for Nintendo had better animation than this - better plot, too.

- I think I'll probably write more on the Twins' moves at some point, but real quick: We should be very fired up by the Jon Rauch acquisition. The guy is a top flight set up man, and has experience as a closer. He immediately displace Guerrier as the 8th inning righty. Mahay is kind of meh, but at the same time he upgrades the Twins bullpen just by his experience and the fact that almost all the bullpen guys suck. He's 38 and has fallen off a bit this year, but has been a pretty good reliever throughout his career. He should take half the Jesse Crain role, with Guerrier slipping down to take the other half, while Crain takes over mop up duty.

For the starters, obviously I would love it if they can swing a way to get Harden. Even if he only pitches 6 times, that will probably be the Twins six best chances to win the rest of the year. If Harden doesn't work out, I've heard Penny has a decent chance of ending up here (although how sweet would it be to get both). He hasn't been as good as he used to, and he's no Harden, but once again, he'd probably be the team's best pitcher, so I'm all for it.  Although after watching Duensing, maybe we just try to pitch him every other day?

- Some studly lifeguard guy is going to make a swim for it from the tower. Apparently he's not scared of this echo-location garbage. The douchenozzles in the tower are going to distract the sharks by yelling. You know, because sound travels through water so well. And there's the, you know, echo-location problem to deal with. And for some reasons the sharks keep trying to get through the hole they already broke in the bottom of the thing to eat the lady who was full of lies.

- I guess stud daddy McGee was just trying to get the flare gun which was at the bottom of the ocean - which he did. But then he shot a shark with it - the only flare which he just risked his life to go after. So basically after all that we're at teh same point we were before, except now there's no flares even at the bottom of the ocean, and that hot chick still hasn't taken her top off. I know it's SyFy, but a boy can dream.

- Ugh, that "same species" comment is really getting to me. What she really should have said was that goblin sharks are of the same order as great whites and also are not at all extinct. See, because goblin sharks and great whites both belong to the order of lamniformes, one of the two main orders of sharks (carcharhiniformes being the other main order, including bulls and tigers), however order is three levels removed from species (order, family, genus, species) so really, they aren't that closely related at all. For reference, poodles and polar bears are of the same order - and thus are just as related as goblin sharks and great whites. As are hippos and giraffes. This movie didn't even try.

- Two of the construction workers got a fishing boat and are coming to get the life guards, even though they never were actually able to fire the flare. As they are driving across the water, they are throwing dynamite into the water to keep the sharks away. Trust me, that sentence sounds awesome, but somehow this movie has managed to destroy the long held equation: sharks + explosions = pimp.

- Recently started watching Mad Men. Pretty good so far. Makes me long for the good old days when you could treat a woman like a piece of meat and get drunk at work. But have you noticed that Dom Draper's house looks exactly like the Nightmare on Elm Street house? Super creepy.

- Did you know there is such a thing as a crocodile shark? Now that is a sweet name. Of course, it's the smallest member of the order lamniformes (the same as the Great White - duhn duhn duhn) at only 3 feet long. But it did wreak some serious havoc by biting a bunch of undersea fiberoptic cables laid by AT&T and causing a ton of damage - which I think was actually the plot of Shark Attack 3 and the worst book ever written, Meg by Steve Alten. THE MAIN CHARACTER ENDS UP WALKING AROUND INSIDE A MEGALODON OMG WTF!!!! Don't ever read that.

- A perch and a barracuda are of the same order. Think about that the next time you laugh at a perch. They're practically the same species.

- The world's smallest fishing boat apparently can fit seven people, and the constructioners pick up our life guard friends. The sharks neglect to ram this smallest of boats despite having rammed several boats earlier that were even bigger. But, bummer of all bummers, they run out of gas. They ran out of gas. They have no more fuel. Sometimes I wish I was just making these movies up in my head, and nobody had actually green lighted scripts like this.

-Ugh.  Somehow, despite having no fuel, they magically drifted to the construction house.  Well, not quite to the construction house, they stopped about 25 feet from it for no explainable reason, and are now sitting there and "have to swim for it."  The sharks show up, and old man who got engaged to super-uninformed and now digesting in a shark's belly life guard lady jumps in and swims away from the house to distract the sharks.  Some would say that was noble.  Others, like me, would say he just wants his time on this movie to finally end.

- Now they are in the basement of the construction house, which is half flooded of course, and also of course, somehow a shark got in and is now stalking Tackleberry and hot blondie.  Luckily, Tackleberry saves blondie and severely injures the shark with a chainsaw.  Yep, you read that right.

- Main construction guy somehow blew it up by doing something with some pipes.  I seriously have no idea.  That made less sense than Christina Aguilera marrying that little troll guy she married.

- Ewww.  That manly Maggie G. is now making out with studly McLifeguard.  Gross.  And they appear to be in a truck which is half underwater.  I don't remember how they got there.  That scene must have been hell for that actor guy.

- For some reason Lifeguard guy just got out of the truck and into the water, and of course a shark came after him which he of course then killed using a chainsaw.  Again.  This is so weird.

- They just killed the last shark, this time by trapping and then stabbing it to death with various construction tools.  Then they are finally picked up by helicopter and this garbage is over, but not before we find out that Studly Lifeguard and main construction guy are both in love with manly Maggie.  She says, "How do you boys feel about sharing your toys?"  I'm totally not kidding.  She just proposed a threesome.

Overall, this was awful.  Bad story, faulty science to a degree last seen in a second-grader's story, and put the cherry on top, there were like, no main characters killed.  The end total was five still living, which is an embarrasment itself, and that was out of like seven characters we were actually introduced to.  I had such high hopes, but this might have been the worst one yet.  I'm still not sure why I keep doing this to myself.