Piranha 3D

Piranha 3D
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Alexandre Aja
Produced by	Alexandre Aja Mark Canton Marc Toberoff Grégory Levasseur
Written by	Pete Goldfinger Josh Stolberg Alexandre Aja Grégory Levasseur
Starring	Elisabeth Shue Adam Scott Jerry O'Connell Ving Rhames Jessica Szohr Steven R. McQueen with Christopher Lloyd and Richard Dreyfuss
Music by	Michael Wandmacher
Cinematography	John R. Leonetti
Editing by	Baxter
Studio	The Weinstein Company Atmosphere Entertainment Chako Film Company Intellectual Properties Worldwide
Distributed by	Dimension Films
Release dates	August 20, 2010 (2010-08-20)
Running time	88 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$24 million
Box office	$83,188,165[1]

Piranha 3D is a 2010 American 3D horror comedy film and a remake of the 1978 film Piranha. It was directed by Alexandre Aja and sports an ensemble cast featuring Steven R. McQueen, Jessica Szohr, Jerry O'Connell, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd, Elisabeth Shue, Adam Scott, Kelly Brook, Riley Steele, Ving Rhames and Eli Roth.

Plot

Fisherman Matt Boyd (Richard Dreyfuss) is fishing in Lake Victoria, Arizona when a small earthquake hits, splitting the lake floor and causing a whirlpool. Boyd falls in and is ripped apart by a school of piranhas that emerge from the chasm and ascend the vortex.

Jake Forester (Steven R. McQueen) is admiring attractive tourists as spring break begins. He reunites with his old crush, Kelly (Jessica Szohr) and meets Derrick Jones (Jerry O'Connell), a sleazy pornographer, as well as Danni Arslow (Kelly Brook), one of his actresses. Derrick convinces Jake to show him good spots on the lake for filming a pornographic movie. That night, Jake's mother, Sheriff Julie Forester (Elisabeth Shue), searches for the missing Matt Boyd with Deputy Fallon (Ving Rhames). They find his mutilated body and contemplate closing the lake. However, this is made difficult by two thousand partying college students on spring break, who are important for bringing revenue to the small town. The next morning, a lone cliff diver is attacked and consumed by the marauding fish.

Jake bribes his sister and brother, Laura (Brooklynn Proulx) and Zane (Sage Ryan), to stay home alone so that he can show Derrick around the lake. After Jake leaves, Zane drafts Laura to go fishing on a small sandbar island. They forget to tie the boat down and are stranded in the middle of the lake. Meanwhile, Jake goes to meet with Derrick and runs into Kelly, who invites herself onto Derrick’s boat, The Barracuda. Jake meets Crystal Shepard (Riley Steele), another of Derrick’s actresses, and cameraman Andrew Cunningham (Paul Scheer).

Julie takes a team of seismologist divers — Novak (Adam Scott), Sam (Ricardo Chavira), and Paula (Dina Meyer) — to the fissure. Novak speculates that the rift leads to a buried prehistoric lake. Paula and Sam scuba dive to the bottom and discover a large cavern filled with large piranha egg stocks. Both are killed by the piranhas before they can alert the others to the discovery. Novak and Julie find Paula's corpse and pull it onto the boat, capturing a lone piranha, which they take to Carl Goodman (Christopher Lloyd), a marine biologist who works as a pet store owner. He explains that it is a super-aggressive prehistoric species, long believed to be extinct.

Julie, Novak, Fallon, and Deputy Taylor Roberts (Jason Spisak) try to evacuate the lake, but their warnings are ignored until the piranhas begin to attack the tourists. Novak boards a jet-ski with a shotgun to help while Fallon drags people to shore and Julie and Taylor try to get swimmers into the police boat. A floating stage capsizes from the weight of the panicking guests, pulling an electric wire which mutilates some tourists. Almost everyone in the lake is either wounded or killed by the piranhas or panicking guests who were recklessly driving their speed boats and accidentally causing the deaths of others (A man tries to speed away in a boat and ends up both shredding people but a woman's hair is caught in the motor and the hair and her upper forehead skin is ripped off her face. The boat then capsizes as people try to enter it and the man and the guests are devoured).

Meanwhile, Jake spots Laura and Zane on the island, and forces Derrick to rescue them. Derrick crashes the boat into some rocks, flooding the rooms below deck. Kelly is trapped in the kitchen while Derrick, Crystal and Drew fall overboard from the impact of the collision. Crystal is devoured and Drew is presumably killed. Meanwhile, Danni manages to get a partially eaten Derrick back on board.

Deputy Fallon makes a last stand, taking a boat motor and using its propeller to shred and kill many piranhas, though it is implied he is finally devoured by them. After the chaos settles, Julie receives a call from Jake pleading for help. Julie and Novak steal a speed boat and head off towards the kids. They reach Jake and attach a rope to his boat. Julie, Danni, Laura, and Zane start crossing the rope, but the piranhas latch onto Danni's hair and ultimately devour her. The others make it to safety, but the rope comes loose. Using Derrick's corpse as a distraction, Jake ties the line to himself and goes to save Kelly. He ties Kelly to him and lights a flare after releasing the gas in a pair of stored propane tanks. Novak starts the boat and speeds away just as the piranhas surround Kelly and Jake. They are dragged to safety and the propane tanks explode, destroying the boat and killing most of the piranhas.

Mr Goodman calls Julie on the radio, and Julie tells him that they seem to have killed the majority of the piranhas. Terrified, Goodman tells her that the reproductive glands on the piranha they obtained were not mature, which means that the fish they were fighting were only the babies. As Novak wonders aloud where the parents are, a human sized piranha leaps out and knocks him into the water.

Cast

• Elisabeth Shue as Sheriff Julie Forester
• Steven R. McQueen as Jake Forester
• Adam Scott as Novak Radzinsky
• Jerry O'Connell as Derrick Jones
• Ving Rhames as Deputy Fallon
• Jessica Szohr as Kelly Driscoll
• Dina Meyer as Paula Montellano
• Christopher Lloyd as Carl Goodman
• Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Boyd
• Ricardo Chavira as Sam Montez
• Kelly Brook as Danni Arslow
• Paul Scheer as Andrew Cunningham
• Cody Longo as Todd Dupree
• Sage Ryan as Zane Forester
• Brooklynn Proulx as Laura Forester
• Riley Steele as Crystal Shepard
• Devra Korwin as Mrs. Goodman
• Jason Spisak as Deputy Taylor Roberts
• Eli Roth as Wet T-Shirt Contest MC
• Ashlynn Brooke as Cheerleader
• Bria Roberts as Heather
• Bonnie Morgan as Sorority Girl (Inner-tube)
• Gianna Michaels as Parasail Girl

Richard Dreyfuss said that he accepted the role with after Bob Weinstein persuaded him by offering the actor a larger salary, which Dreyfuss later donated to charity. Dreyfuss also stated that the ill-fated character he plays is a parody and a near-reincarnation of Matt Hooper, the character he portrayed in the 1975 film Jaws.^[2] Jaws later served as inspiration for the parody film entitled Piranha. The song the character in Piranha 3D listens to on the radio on his boat is "Show Me the Way to Go Home", which Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw sing together in Jaws.

Former pornographic actress Ashlynn Brooke, and pornographic actress Gianna Michaels make cameos in the movie as partygoers who meet extremely gruesome, piranha-related demises.^[3]

Production

Chuck Russell was originally scheduled to direct the film, and made uncredited rewrites to the script by Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, as well as incorporating the original John Sayles script that Joe Dante directed the first time around.^[4] Alexandre Aja was selected to direct the film instead.^[5]

Production on the film was scheduled to begin late 2008, but was delayed until March 2009.^[6] In October 2008, Aja stated filming would begin in the spring. He further stated "it's such a difficult movie, not only because of the technicality of it and the CGI fish, but also because it all happens in a lake.^[7] We were supposed to start shooting now, but the longer to leave it the colder the water gets.^[8] The movie takes place during Spring Break and, of course, the studio wanted it ready for the summer, but if you've got 1,000 people who need to get murdered in the water, you have to wait for the right temperature for the water, for the weather, for everything."^[9]

Shooting took place in June 2009 at Bridgewater Channel in Lake Havasu, located in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. The water was also dyed red for the shooting.^[10]

Citing constraints with 3D camera rigs, Aja shot Piranha in 2D and converted to 3D in post production using a 3D conversion process developed by Michael Roderick and used by the company, Inner-D.^[11] Unlike some other 3D converted films released in 2010, Piranha's conversion was not done as an afterthought, and it represents one of the first post-conversion processes to be well received by critics.^[12][13][14]

Release

Piranha 3D's theatrical release date had been set for April 16, 2010, but was delayed.^[15] The film was planned to premiere on August 27, 2010,^[16][17] but in June 2010 was moved to August 20, 2010.^[18] The film's first trailer debuted with Avatar. A second trailer was shown in prints of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Inception. It was set to have a panel on 24 July 2010 as part of the San Diego Comic-Con International but was cancelled after convention organizers decided the footage that was planned to be shown was not appropriate.^[19] Nine minutes of footage, with some unfinished effects, were leaked onto websites. The clip used in promotional TV ads and the trailer that shows Jessica Szohr's character, Kelly, face to face with a pack of piranhas was not used in the movie, and was used for promotion only.

The official poster was released June 22, 2010.^[20]

Box office

Piranha 3D grossed $10,106,872 in its first 3 days, opening at #6 in the United States box office.^[21] In the United Kingdom, Piranha 3D opened at #4 at the box office, earning £1,487,119. As of May 16, 2011, Piranha 3D has made $83,188,165 worldwide.^[22]

Reception

Piranha 3D has received average and mixed reviews. It is certified "fresh" on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with an approval rating of 73% and an average score of 6.2 out of 10, based on 119 reviews. The consensus reads, "Playing exactly to expectations for a movie about killer fish run amok, Piranha 3-D dishes out gore, guffaws and gratuitous nudity with equal glee."^[23] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received a score of 53, based on 20 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average reviews".^[24] A tongue-in-cheek scholarly review of the movie was written for the journal Copeia (Chakrabarty & Fink 2011), which reviewed the movie as if it were a documentary film.^[25]

Empire gave the film three out of five stars, saying "Remember the film you hoped Snakes on a Plane would be – this is it! By any sane cinematic standards, meretricious trash ... but thrown at you with such good-humoured glee that it's hard to resist. It's a bumper-sticker of a movie: honk if you love tits and gore! Honk honk honk."^[26] Christy Lemire, film critic for the Associated Press, said "Run, don't walk: Piranha 3D is hilariously, cleverly gory. Mere words cannot describe how awesomely gnarly Piranha 3D is, how hugely entertaining, and how urgently you must get yourself to the theatre to see it. Like, now."^[27] HollywoodLife.com called the film "a campy masterpiece of a movie", adding "If you have an ounce of fun in your body, you will love this movie about killer piranhas that overtake a town of hotties — in 3D!"^[28] Peter Hall of Cinematical.com said "The gore, the nudity, the language, the gags, the characters-- it's all always on the rise. Just when you think things could not possibly get more ridiculous, that the film has peaked, Aja and screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg manage to ram another syringe of adrenaline into its heart."^[29] The Hollywood Reporter referred to the film as "a pitch-perfect, guilty-pleasure serving of late-summer schlock that handily nails the tongue-in-cheek spirit of the Roger Corman original" while stating "Jaws it ain't -- Aja exhibits little patience for such stuff as dramatic tension and tautly coiled suspense, and there are some undeniable choppy bits...but he never loses sight of the potential fun factor laid out in Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg's script."^[30] The Orlando Sentinel gave the film one and a half stars out of four, stating that "Piranha 3D goes for the jugular. And generally misses, but generally in an amusing way."^[31]

Home media

The film was released on the DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 3D formats on Tuesday, January 11, 2011. The "3D" part of the title was taken off the 2D releases to prevent confusion of the two formats. The film was released in Australia on Thursday, December 30, 2010. The film was shown on British television on Channel 5 on February 10, 2013 for the first time, and in 2D format.

Soundtrack

Lakeshore Records released the soundtrack album of Piranha 3D which included mostly rap, dance, hip-hop and R&B music. Artists include Shwayze, Envy, Flatheads, Amanda Blank, Public Enemy, Dub Pistols, and Hadouken!.^[32]

Track listing

Songs not included on the soundtrack

• "Show Me the Way to Go Home" by Mitch Miller & The Gang
• "I'm Not a Whore" by LMFAO
• "Fetish" by Far East Movement
• "Girls on the Dance Floor" by Far East Movement

Sequel

Dimension Films announced a sequel shortly after the first film was released.^[33] The film is Piranha 3DD and is directed by John Gulager with Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan writing. It was released on June 1, 2012. It stars Ving Rhames, Paul Scheer and Christopher Lloyd, reprising their roles from Piranha 3D .^[34] Piranha 3DD is set at a waterpark where the piranhas find a way through the pipes.^[35]

Following its release, it failed to generate the positive critical reaction of its predecessor and grossed only $8,493,728.^[36]

References

External links

• Official website
• Piranha 3D at allmovie
• Piranha 3D at the Internet Movie Database
• Piranha 3D at Rotten Tomatoes
• Piranha 3D at Metacritic