"Sharknado 2": Bigger, Dumber, and Seriously Lacking in Chainsaw GIF Moments (A Review)

Is Syfy's "Sharknado" sequel bigger, better, ridiculous-er? Not so much.

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1.

Sharknado 2: The Second One

         
0 1.5 out of 5 stars
Director:
Anthony C. Ferrante
Starring: Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, Kari Wuhrer, Vivica A. Fox, Mark McGrath, Judd Hirsch
Screenwriter(s):
Thunder Levin
Duration: 120 minutes, with commercials
Release Date:
July 30, 2014, on Syfy
MPAA Rating:
N/A

There's an obvious pun to be made about Sharknado 2: The Second One: It's "jumping the shark."

The unnecessary but inevitable sequel's makers are steps ahead of their critics. Midway into The Second One, surfer-cum-cardboard-deep-hero Fin Shepherd (Ian Ziering) literally hops atop sharks swirling in an ocean that's engulfed the Manhattan streets. And, because a made-for-TV movie about tornadoes full of killer sharks needs no subtlety, his brother-in-law, Martin (Mark McGrath), says, "You know what you just did, don't you? You jumped the shark."

The gag lands with a harder thud than the massive fish that flattens rapper-turned-actress Sandra "Pepa" Denton in Sharknado 2. Minus any of the original's memorable moments like Ziering chainsawing his way out of an airborn shark, this lazy follow-up is exactly what you'd never want a production from schlock factory The Asylum to be: boring.

2.

Last July, nobody anticipated Sharknado becoming a social media juggernaut—it was just the latest entry in Syfy's ongoing series of knowingly goofy animals-gone-wild films, following non-classics like Dinocroc vs. Supergator, Ice Spiders, and Sharktopus. Once Sharknado's wonderfully bad trailer went viral, though, Syfy had an unlikely phenomenon on its hands. To its credit, Sharknado completely delivered on its trailer's promise. Sharks, indeed, flew across the screen in crappy-looking CGI; Ian Ziering treated the role like it was his big comeback, acting his heart out while everyone else around him phoned it in; and co-star Tara Reid, playing Ziering's character's main squeeze, reaffirmed her standing as one of Hollywood's worst actresses.

That's all absent from Sharknado 2. This time, the action moves from Los Angeles to New York City. Rather than playfully transcending into ludicrousness overload, the Sharknado team has worsened the visual effects, downgraded the acting, and overpopulated Manhattan with bottom-barrel celebrity cameos. Yes, that's Andy Dick as an NYPD officer for one pointless 30-second scene; and, yup, that's WWE legend Kurt Angle playing the city's fire chief. Biz Markie shows up as a pizza shop owner whose name is Vinnie and says, "Fuhgeddaboutit," and—because, fuck it, why not?—there's Billy Ray Cyrus as a doctor. Matt Lauer and Al Roker, meanwhile, repeatedly turn up in news reports as themselves and say things like, "It's a twister…with teeth." 

There's nothing wrong with cramming a bunch of D-listers into an intentionally moronic movie like Sharknado 2: The Second One. Where else will Andy Dick and Billy Ray Cyrus get work? What other filmmakers would make a has-been like Ian Ziering and one-time Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath their movie's heroes? That's what The Asylum's films are good for—they match Hollywood's lower class with dumb high-concept genre fare. But in the past, namely with the O.G. Sharknado, those brainlessly lofty concepts lived up to their potential. In Sharknado 2, the characters visit Citi Field and can't get any more creative than using souvenir bats as weapons. The movie's peak of disaster movie ingenuity comes when the Statue of Liberty's head destructively rolls down Manhattan streets, but even that's uninspired—Cloverfield did it much better six years ago.

3.

​When it's not ripping off superior movies, Sharknado 2 is mostly just Ian Ziering, Mark McGrath, and countless extras running from computer-generated sharks and occasionally stopping to offer hokey commentary: "Even the sharknadoes are tougher in New York." Its only moment of lowbrow fun happens before the opening credits. The movie opens in an airplane flying through a storm at night. In a likable homage to "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," one of the most celebrated episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, Ziering sees a shark land on the plane's wing and freaks out. The flight attendant, played by Kelly Osborne, attempts to calm him down, while the plane's pilots, played by Rachel True (Half Baked's "Mary Jane") and Robert Hays (reviving his Airplane! character), navigate through the growing sharknado outside. Of course, sharks break into the plane for no reason whatsoever and one of them eats Wil Wheaton.

It's everything you'd want from a Sharknado sequel compressed into one 10-minute scene. As the rest of Sharknado 2 sluggishly unfolds, you realize that its opener should've been a new Sharknado epilogue. They could've re-released it as Sharknado: Longer in the Tooth. Another way it's a missed opportunity: They could've kept it in Sharknado 2 but had one of Ziering's fellow passengers say to him, "You know what we just did, don't you? We just blew our load."

Matt Barone is a Complex senior staff writer who, yes, just wrote a review of a movie called Sharknado 2: The Second One. He tweets here.

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