Review: Piranha

Certain times films come along that totally revolutionise the way we see the medium and can only be defined as ground-breaking. Thankfully Piranha, originally shown in 3D, is not one of those films instead it is a complete tounge-in-cheek homage to the original Piranha franchise and other B-movies. The flimsy plot concerns a small beach community which is invaded every year for Spring Break in particular it looks at the female sherrif and her teenage son Jake who is desperately in love with a girl-next-door type. Jake ends up becoming a photographer for a slezy girls-gone-wild type director who also manages to convince his would-be-love to come with them. As you can probably guess from the title, tragedy strikes when prehistoric piranhas start to swarm around the sea and gobble up all the horny students and low-lives. The rest of the film is full of screaming, escaping and severed penises as the sherrif must try and keep her family safe and try and defeat the piranhas.

Unlike the last B-Movie homage, Snakes on a Plane, Piranha doesn't take itself too seriously and instead focuses on the flesh and the death. This is evident from the first scene in which Richard Dreyfuss basically copies his scene from Jaws as he gobbled up early doors by the piranhas. The performances are great although Elizabeth Shue does a good turn as the sherrif forced to turn hero and Christopher Lloyd hams it up as a fish shop owner. Also present is Jerry O'Connell as the sleazy director who has the honour of having his member bitten off as well as our own Kelly Brook who spends most of the film topless or naked and utters the immortal line 'nice horn'. The only problem is that we already know that the central family will all survive and most of the superfulous characters will get gobbled up luckily that doesn't matter as this is just a fun, guilty pleasure summer flick that never outstays its welcome.