This one is incredibly bad, but often hilariously so. Barry Williams (yes, that Barry Williams) plays the Secretary of State. His character's name? Bob Grady. So clearly this movie is not taking itself too seriously. How could it when Tiffany is one of the stars. Remember Tiffany? She was big for a weekend in 1987 for lame covers of songs by The Beatles and Tommy James & The Shondells. She was extremely popular with somewhat retarded girls between the ages of eleven and fourteen.
Anyway, Tiffany has gained in years and girth, but not in talent. She has absolutely no acting skill whatsoever. I mean none. None. Was she hired just because Debbie Gibson starred in Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus? Probably. And just as Gibson always had more talent in the music field, she has more in the acting field as well. I can't stress enough how poor Tiffany's acting job is. Okay, here you go. Remember when you were in like second or third grade, and your class put on some sort of short Christmas play? None of the kids could act, but there was always one kid who was particularly awful - so they made him be a tree or something. Remember that? Well, that kid is fucking Laurence Olivier compared to Tiffany. (Perhaps they should have cast Tiffany as a tree.)
Anyway, the film starts on a small boat on a river. On the boat is a U.S. ambassador and a Venezualan diplomat. The boat is attacked by piranha, which jump out of the water (in a nod to James Cameron's masterpiece, Piranha II: The Spawning, in which fish can fly). Well, the piranha eat the boat - hungry little fuckers.
Every character in Mega Piranha is introduced with a black and white freeze frame of their image, with their name zooming across the bottom of the screen accompanied by a swooshing sound. In the world of this film, that's called style.
Tiffany is some sort of scientist who, along with some other scientists, has been increasing the local food supply by redesigning certain species of fish. She was in charge of piranha. Wait, who eats piranha? Anyway, something went wrong, but please don't blame Tiffany. After all, she helps out a lot during the film by shouting out such useful advice as, "Hurry" and "Shoot them" and "Drive faster."
Anyway, Greg Brady sends Jason Fitch (played by the extremely serious Paul Logan, Bram Stoker's Way Of The Vampire) to find out who assassinated the United States ambassador. Fitch is helped, and then hindered by Colonel Diaz, who is doing something in the jungle. It's alluded to often - Tiffany confronts him at one point, saying that she knows what he's doing in the jungle. And for that, she's arrested. But we never learn what he was doing in the jungle. But anyway, Tiffany hands Fitch a piece of the boat, and Fitch makes his report based on that one little piece of wood. He suggests to Diaz that "a group of animals working together" destroyed the boat. He delivers that line seriously.
Fitch wants to go to the river to continue his investigation. Diaz says, "I'll make sure I fly you there immediately." That is perhaps the oddest line in the film. Read it to yourself out loud a few times. It's goofy. Anyway, they take off in a helicopter, but when they get to the site, Diaz suddenly says the area is off limits, and yells some inane nonsense about the United States, then flies back. Why would he do this? What a waste of fuel and time - you know, if he wasn't planning on helping Fitch get to the spot anyway. And it makes that line he spoke even more ridiculous.
But whatever, Fitch goes there anyway and sees the giant piranha. In fact, a fish flies out of the water to attack him. But he kills it and takes it back to the laboratory. But that's when Diaz decides to shut down Tiffany's laboratory and she tells him she knows what he does in the jungle. So he arrests her and the other scientists. Diaz and his men torture one of the scientists by hitting him with a book. It looks like a paperback, however, so don't worry about him too much.
Meanwhile the fish are getting bigger, and flying out of the water and exploding into buildings. Yes, exploding. No, i couldn't figure out why. But it's bloody hilarious. Though not nearly as funny as the shot of Paul Logan on his back kicking fish after fish as they fly at him.
This movie is insanely silly. The budget seems to have been two hundred dollars, which they spent on alcohol while writing the script. This film repeats the same establishing shots over and over - every time the film returns to a location. And of course there is some terrible CGI. And more than one nod to Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. In that movie, the shark leaps out of the water and eats a plane. In this movie, a piranha leaps out of the water and eats a helicopter.
The end of the film makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but who cares? I'm looking forward to Mega Shark Vs. Mega Piranha, in which Tiffany and Debbie Gibson mudwrestle. Actually, no, never mind, that sounds utterly repulsive.
