In “Piranha 3D,” an outlandish and all together brilliant new shock-a-palooza from French director Alexandre Aja, Richard Dreyfuss, as a Matt Hooper-like schlub (he’s dressed like the character and singing “Show Me the Way to Go Home”), unwittingly triggers some kind of seismic activity when he drops his beer into a lake. The beer, of course, is given the yuk-yuk in-joke name Amity Beer after the besieged island in “Jaws.” And the seismic activity unleashes a swirling mass of killer, prehistoric, flesh-devouring fish. It’s a slam-bang opening, for sure, and sets the tone for the rest of the film well: this movie is going to be silly, gory, and a whole lot of fun. The beer bottle is telling too, since much of the movie is spent as both a celebration and ruthless take-down of over-the-top American hedonism.
After the initial prologue we’re quickly introduced to the movie’s set-up and cast of characters-cum-fish food. It seems that every spring break the sleepy town of Lake Victoria (state: unknown, although it was filmed in Arizona) is besieged by horny, hopped-up coeds looking to party. In a way, the updated setting is an ingenious solution to one of the problems of the original Roger Corman-produced, John Sayles-scripted, Joe Dante-directed “Piranha.” By making the movie take place at spring break, you have a surefire reason for there to be a whole bunch of people in the water.
It’s around the spring break festivities that we meet our characters – there’s Elisabeth Shue as a tough-as-nails sheriff, Ving Rhames as her deputy, Steven R. McQueen as Shue’s son Jake, Jerry O’Connell as a Joe Francis-like pornographer, Adam Scott as a nerdy seismologist, and Christopher Lloyd as a cantankerous, Doc Brown-ish fish expert. There’s also British Lad Mad icon Kelly Brook and adult film actress Riley Steele, who spends much of the first act cavorting naked underwater to the tune of “The Flower Duet” from opera “Lakme.” The cast reaches a Richard Kelly level of WTF randomness, but they end up cohering way better than they have any right to. Once Eli Roth, fresh from his Screen Actor’s Guild-ensemble-award winning performance in “Inglourious Basterds,” shows up as a wet T-shirt contest impresario, everything makes perfect sense.
Of course, once the nibbly piranhas, created by “Cloverfield” concept designer Neville Page, get out into the lake, everyone turns into mincemeat. The prolonged sequences of carnage have a giddy, inventive kick. Dozens of comely coeds are sliced and diced as the tiny, fanged fish rocket through the water. Giving away any of the grisly gags, courtesy of KNB Effects, would dampen some of the gore-drenched fun. But any expectation you have about what a chompy piranha can do to the human body will be exceeded to the nth degree.
One of the purest pleasures of “Piranha 3D” is the way Aja, who previously directed the slasher masterpiece (slashterpiece?) “High Tension” and the underrated “Hills Have Eyes” remake, manages to squeeze in set pieces of genuine suspense amongst all the go-for-broke craziness. There’s a great bit where a young girl (wholesome Jessica Szohr) is trapped in a sinking boat, the rising water filled with swarming fish, and another where a group of trapped survivors have to crawl along a cable inches above the infested water.
And while not as politically minded as Dante’s original (people seem to be willfully ignoring the direct-to-cable remake that aired on Showtime in the mid-90s), there is a fair amount of cultural criticism, with Aja seemingly commenting on the way that Americans, always under the thumb of a puritanical society, break away in wildly unhealthy, hedonistic ways when given the chance. At one point, the party-goers are confronted with a barge full of evangelicals, carrying signs about how the nubile revelers are going straight to hell. Ving Rhames, attempting to round everyone up and get them back to terra firma before they get gobbled up, looks at the bible thumpers and yells, “I don’t give a fuck about Satan, get back to land!” In Aja’s worldview, both sinner and saint are equally edible.
There’s more blood, boobs and bacchanalia packed into the film’s sleek 87 minutes than exists in an entire season of “True Blood.” The “3D” part of its title is even more impressive. Even though it was converted after-the-fact (the reflection from water created some kind of problem with the 3D cameras), the filmmakers worked for a better part of a year on the film’s dimensionality. Sometimes the results are a “you are there” level of immersion, other sequences have a goofy, pop-up-book quality, but both work incredibly well. There’s a whole lot of stuff that zooms out at you, right in the middle of frame, but it hearkens back to the more zingy 3D horror movies of the ’50s and ’80s. This isn’t trying to be “Avatar;” it’s just trying to goose you.
And goose you it does, time and time again. It may not have the puzzle box intricacy of “Inception” or the heart-tugging emotionality of “Toy Story 3” or “The Kids Are All Right,” but you’ll be hard pressed to think of a movie released this summer that so relentlessly (and wittily) entertains. All the actors know what movie they’re in (particularly Adam Scott’s priceless line readings and everything associated with Christopher Lloyd), Aja directs the action scenes with energy to spare, the funny-scary tone is spot-on and the bargain basement special effects have a handmade charm that rarely betrays their obvious cheapness. Maybe “Piranha 3D” feels like such a home run because it’s a surprise; in a season where everything is endlessly hyped, this micro-budgeted schlock, which didn’t even screen for critics, has come out of nowhere and totally fucking rules. Dive in. [A-]