Sharks in Venice

Stephen Baldwin, Bashar Rahal (2008) A man must brave shark-infested Venetian waters to find treasure and rescue his kidnapped girlfriend.

Sci-Fi Saturday movie from 12/14.

They really advertised the hell out of this one. Could hardly watch anything on the Sci-Fi channel without seeing and ad for this.

Oh, and you know who Stephen Baldwin is? Yup, he's the crappy one. The one that I generally spend about half of the review mocking and complaining about. And jsut FYI, he is known in this household as "Fat Baldwin". Just thought you might want want to know. I'm hoping he gets eaten. Although he did get top billing. Although that's not really much of an honor for a Sci-Fi Original Picture. But it generally means you're not going to die. At least until the very end, after what everyone thinks is the end of the movie, when the monster returns for one final hurrah. Although they haven't been doing that in a lot of the movies lately. Kind of a shame, as I'm usually not sympathetic to any of the characters in the movie, and thus won't particularly care if they get devoured horribly.

And now I'm going to put the period on the outside of the quotation marks whenever possible just to annoy my "brother". Take that, fiend.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, Fat Baldwin hasn't showed up, so I haven't had a a chance to mock him incessantly yet.

Oh, great. I wonder if its the same director as that other movie I was watching a while back. The shark attacks thus far are a bunch of quick cuts of sharks, water, the victim, all put together in a very annoying fashion. Very similar to some movie I saw a while ago... And it hasn't gotten any better with age...

Fat Baldwin as a college professor. Yeah, believable. But at least he has decent hair. Or at least not ridiculously stupid hair. Although he does seem to have some sort of musical score for everything he says, making it seem very profound and deep. I'm not fooled. Ooh, now he just has to look at things for his musical score to show up. He must be important.

Apparently the official government position is that there are no sharks in Venice. Which means that there are. A lot. I'm offering a sizable reward to the first shark who eats Stephen Baldwin.

Apparently the backstory is something about the Crusades, a shit-ton of treasure, the Medicis, Marco Polo's fleet, and a lot of killaging. Oh, yeah. A lot of apathy. Oh wait, that's not so much in the movie, just sort of in this room.

Oh, and you know who should never wear a skin-tight wet-suit thing? That's right. Stephen Baldwin. Who now seems to be hallucinating sharks. Honestly, I'm hoping for a shark wearing a business suit walking down the side of the canal. They'd never expect it.

And apparently the canals of Venice are really polluted. Pretty sure that sentence should end with the phrase "with sharks".

Apparently the director of this movie, Danny Lerner was also a producer on Raging Sharks. That probably explains the similarities I noted earlier. He's also going to be the producer of Rambo V. That doesn't spell too well for that movie. And people can somehow speak underwater, even though they've got SCUBA regulators in their mouths. Any idea if that's even possible? I've never SCUBA dived before, but it seems that it would be bordering on impossible to be able to talk intelligibly.

And dude just said that his tank was nearing empty, and yet he keeps swimming around calmly. And the gauge said that he had no air left.

And someone just got attacked by a shark. I thought Baldwin was the only one underwater at the time, but now he's swimming around seemingly un-horribly mangled. Seems he was bit, but the shark didn't like the taste of him or something. I do believe I intended to reward the first shark that ate Stephen Baldwin. Biting him and letting him live do not cut it. So, no reward for you Mr. Shark.

And we're only about a half hour into the movie, and he's already found the treasure. Hopefully that means this movie will be rather short, and I don't have to put of with Fat Baldwin's jibba-jabba no more.

And this fight scene business has to go. Apparently Baldwin may have gotten into a fight with a shark. There was a knife, some blood, some fat guy, and a shark. Other than that, I got nothing. Oh, and there was a leg as well... But not Baldwin's leg. Because he's still got both. And I'm pretty sure he didn't have 3 to start with. I think they may have been hoping that the viewer would be apalled at the prospect of Mr. Baldwin losing a leg, and then be relieved when he still had both legs. Unfortunately, it seems as though they got the opposite reaction from me.

I must be in the wrong line of work. No one has thus far offered me a briefcase full of cash. I'm slightly disappointed.

And some guy just got eaten by a shark. Sadly, the sun, reflective TV screen, and my camera are not cooperating today, so I can't get any decent pictures. But it was a glorious scene, as the shark managed to the guy, some chick nowhere near the edge of the canal, and cause a gigantic splash, and managed to not get any of the pavement wet, even though there was plenty of CG water.

And Mr. Baldwin seems to enjoy reading stage directions. As he was sightseeing, his line was "Looking at beautiful things". Pretty sure if they actually had a decent scriptwriter, they wouldn't have drivel such as this. Although then it wouldn't be a proper bad scifi movie. Oh, and the bad guys just jacked Baldwin's girlfriend and drove away with her in a boat. By which I mean that they were in a boat with an obvious dummy who was dressed similarly to the girlfriend.

And it seems that in this modern age, the hope for a high-speed gondola chase is very slim. I'm disappointed.

And they should really be consistent with their shark attack footage. There are some shots interspersed throughout the movie with sharks that are obviously eating things on the open ocean.

And now there are apparently ninjas. But I really can't tell, as the director really likes cutting to a new shot before you cant actually figure out what's going on. And if you're going to be a ninja wearing all black, wouldn't you choose black shoes to with your outfit, rather than white tennis shoes? Although I thoroughly respect these ninjas, as they seem to be going out of their way to push people, rather than being content pushing only the people in their way. And now the guy's UZI seems to be shooting bullets, while earlier it was just a tranquilizer gun.

Scenario 1: Bad guy has a chainsaw. What do you do? Apparently Fat Baldwin's idea of a good idea is to pick up a wooden table.

Scenario 2: Bad guy has a chainsaw. You chose a wooden table as your weapon. His chainsaw cuts through your table. What do you do? Baldwin decided that a wooden chair was his best choice of weapon. Just as a side note, the table was a lot more solidly built than the chair. Might have made sense to go in the opposite order as a demonstration that he's learning, but it just made him look dumber, as he chose an even more ludicrous weapon.

Apparently the props guy was only able to scrounge up one UZI and 2 Berettas.

Apparently some part of the mafia's master plan for control of stuff involved the release of baby sharks into the canals of Venice. I'm really not sure what this was meant to accomplish, but it almost guarantees that Beardy McAfro is going to get eaten by sharks at the end of this.

And now they have explosive harpoons. Not really sure where those came from.

Scenario 2: If you have a speargun thing that shot explosive harpoons, would you have the harpoons be attached to the gun? A normal speargun thing I can understand, but an explosive one? That's just courting disaster.

And the sound effect they're using for pistol shots seems to be the same sound that Wolfenstein 3D used for their pistol. And the bad guy just got portcullised. And in response Beardy McAfro has decided to send more of his goons to kill Baldwin. Unfortunately, they've already established that the only person who knows where the treasure is is in fact Baldwin. But somehow one of the guys survived the inevitable sharking, and found the treasure. And somehow managed to fit a full-sized MP5 down his shirt without any sort of bulge. And apparently all treasure chests include some barrels of gunpowder.

And the props guy seems to have found that MP5, and a chrome ass 1911. Probably the same 1911 from that other movie. And they seem to have scrounged up a bunch of M16s for the inevitable SWAT team scene. ANd now the bad guys have 2 UZIs. Movin' on up in the world.

Have to respect Baldwin in this fight scene. The bad guy goes for the gun on the ground, while Baldwin just calmly kicks him in the face when he bends over.

I'm thinking that some of the ninjas from earlier have swapped sides and are now on the SWAT team, as they seem to be going out of their way to push random things for no apparent reason.

ANd they just used the same exact shot of some guy rappelling in to the warehouse three times in relatively rapid succession. And he wasn't even pointing, or much less holding, a gun, even though he was rappelling into a firefight. Three times. You figure he might have learned.

But luckily its over now. And now I don't have to pay attention to Stephen Baldwin for some time to come.

By the way, they had the final scene of some guy getting eaten by a shark. Nice to see that they brought that staple back.

And you know a movie's bad when I complain more about it than about Stephen Baldwin,