An earthquake opens a fissure under Lake Victoria, Arizona (shot at Lake Havasu, Arizona) that leads to a further subterranean lake containing prehistoric piranha. All this conveniently happens at spring break when thousands of horny teenagers and college kids descend on the lake.
Full of recognisable faces Elisabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Christopher Lloyd, Jerry O’Connell, Kelly Brook, Dina Meyer and a cameo from Eli Roth. As they are killed of in an arbitrary way you don’t really care who gets killed and who doesn’t, this is probably a good thing as not many of them make it to the end as you would expect. The 3D is as bad and pointless as you would expect. The acting is so poor that Kelly Brook and porn star Riley Steele don’t stand out as been particularly bad. The story is thin and unoriginal offering nothing but monster movie clichés. Full of gratuitous nudity but strangely no sex considering a subplot involves the making of a porn movie. The is also huge amounts of blood and gore. Therefore it ticks all the boxes for the genre except scares that are sadly lacking.
Although dated the original Piranha had a little depth and substance partly due to the political subtext giving it some meaning. It was directed by Roger Corman who went on make seminal horror movies The Howling (1981) and Gremlins (1984), it was written by John Sayles and produced by “King of the B-movies” Roger Corman. I really wanted to like this remake mainly because of French director Alexandre Aja who impressed with Switchblade Romance (2003) aka Haute tension or High Tension and went on to make the surprisingly good remake of The Hills Have Eyes (2006).
However you look at it this is a poor movie, there are a few good things about it, The Richard Dreyfuss cameo is inspired and the ending is pretty good, in a cheesy but funny way. It was also great to see Elisabeth Shue in a movie again, although she has made the odd appearance in recent years, it’s the first new film I have seen her in since the equally crappy Hollow Man ten years ago.
Although utter crap there is enough good fun scenes to mean it wasn’t a complete waste of time, the only reason to see the movie in the theatre/cinema is the 3D. As the best thing I can say about the 3D is that I didn’t notice it for the majority of the film my recommendation is if you really want to see it wait for the DVD.
Two Stars out of Five
Fandango Groovers Movie Blog 
Other than the opening credits the 3D was generally OK, although they definitely spent more time on the babes than they did with any field of depth, or the piranhas!
As much as I love her to bits, still felt ripped off having to pay a tenner to see Kelly in full 3D glory.
For a nice Elizabeth Shue movie, try Don McKay. Somehow I think I’ll pass on this one, though….
I definitely agree that this isn’t worth the trip to the theater. The thrills are completely laughing and, frankly, the only humorous moments in the film (in my opinion) belonged to Christopher Lloyd.
I don’t get why so many people have enjoyed this film. I had zero fun watching it.
I believe that in my review I said the film’s tagline should have been “It’s your only chance this year to see a penis get eaten by a piranha — in 3D.” I stand by my statement. This is absolute trash with no redeeming qualities other than the star cameos and the shoutouts to other, better killer fish films and the fact that everyone, even Elizabeth Shue, looks to be having a ball.