Shark Night

Little did Steven Spielberg know that when he made Jaws way back in 1975 it would spawn countless inferior takes on the same subject. Jaws remains the best shark attack movie ever made, and the rest are just wastes of time, including the sequels to Jaws.

Shark Night, a 2011 film shot in 3D, is a stupid, ridiculous exercise in PG-13 mayhem. At least a movie like Piranha had plenty of nudity and gore, while Shark Night stops at bikinis and mild dismemberment.

Set on a lake in Louisiana, Shark Night concerns college students partying at the home of Sara Paxton. When one of them (the black one, of course) is attacked while water-skiing, losing an arm, they realize a shark is in the lake, even though sharks don't generally inhabit lakes (nor are they capable of keeping up with speedboats). The fellow survives a ripped off arm quite well (though he will eventually become food), only to have the rest of the kids eaten until only two remain--Paxton, and the cute but nerdy pre-med student (Dustin Milligan).

To explain why there are a host of different types of sharks, including hammerheads, cookie cutters, tiger sharks, and even a great white, in a Louisiana lake, we get the absurd plot twist that they are being put there by a hunky diving instructor and his redneck accomplices. It seems that he used to date Paxton, and she rode a propeller into his face.

There is nothing admirable in this film except the site of Paxton and Katharine McPhee, late of the TV show Smash, in bathing suits, and the inclusion of an inflatable beer pong mattress, which is a great idea. The sharks look incredibly fake, and the best way to avoid shark attack--staying out or on top of the water--is consistently ignored. This is an example of Darwinism at its finest.