All movies about a killer animal/monster in the water should be no more than 15 minutes long, and they should all end the same way. After the first person is killed by the shark/piranha/super eel/giant turtle, everyone else should just decide not to go swimming in this body of water. When people don’t have the sense to figure this out, it is hard for audiences to have any sympathy for them. This leaves us rooting for the sea monster to teach the idiot protagonists a lesson about avoiding obvious danger that most 5-year-olds in the real world already know. If the sea monster is charismatic and witty, then these “danger lessons” can make for a fun movie. The problem with Piranha 3D is that the fish don’t have anything amusing to say. If, for example, the fish said something like “Let’s see you fuck John Stamos’s ex wife now, fat kid from Stand By Me!” as he bit off Jerry O’Connell’s nuts, it would have actually been an interesting scene. Instead, O’Connell just says “Darn. That fish just bit off my nuts.”, which totally takes the intensity out of the moment. Without snappy dialogue, these campy movies don’t have much to offer.
Fortunately, Piranha 3D is saved by a bizarre turn of events. After getting his junk mangled, O’Connell has re-constructive surgery to become Elizabeth Shue. Shue then uses kick-ass karate moves she picked up while dating Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso to beat the crap out of all the fish. You wouldn’t think hand-to-hand combat would be the way to go with a school of hungry piranhas, but Shue makes you believe in baddass miracles. By the time she’s back on the dock feeding her disciples with endless amounts of bread and slaughtered fish, the audience is back in her corner. I know what you’re thinking. The endless fish is accounted for, but where did she get all the bread? Same place Jesus did: her MIND! Piranha 3D is worth seeing if for no other reason than Richard Dreyfus’s cameo as Jesus Christ himself. He appears during the celebratory feast to tell Shue: “You’ve done well, my son..er daughter..er whatever you are.” This is the only decent line in the entire movie and it comes when it needed the most. Oops, I just ruined the movie for you by telling you the only funny line in it. Oh well.