Mega Piranha

I have wasted much of my life watching SyFy Original Movies. My repertoire thus far includes such notables as “Wraiths of Roanoke,” “Basilisk: The Serpent King,” and “Supergator.” But “Mega Piranha” has to count among the great Original Movies. It has all the signs of what I consider a superior SyFy Original Movie: total carnage, lots of bad special effects, shameless ripping off from better movies, exploitation of current events/politics for its own purposes, and last but not least, the movie revels in the sheer amount of illogic in its story. While watching this flick, you can just imagine the screenwriters chugging beer and saying things like, “Hey, why don’t we have a piranha swallow a helicopter in one bite? That would be SO AWESOME, man!”

PLOT SUMMARY

A pack of genetically altered piranha escape from a ‘80s pop idol’s lab in Venezuela and run wild in the Amazon. It is up to beefy Fred Ward-lookalike Jason to outmaneuver an insane Venezuelan army commander and save the world from MEGA PIRANHA!

NUTRITION FACTS:Vitamin B-Acting: 80%

Colonel Diaz (the crazy army commander) gets most of the credit for the high B-Acting levels. When Diaz yells or throws a fit, he comes off like a spoiled brat who needs a straitjacket. Whenever he isn’t shrieking, he spouts conspiracy theories about the Americans conquering Venezuela.

The rest of the cast is notable for its sheer lack of acting. Barry Williams, better known as Greg Brady from “The Brady Bunch,” does his best to look uberserious as Secretary of State, but comes off as bored. (Is it a coincidence that Williams’ character is named “Bob Grady”? Somehow I doubt it.)

Barry Williams searches for his grooviness.

 Jason, played by Paul Logan, gives Williams a run for his money in the “Most Immobile Face” competition.

Sadly, the gun did not get a starring role.

As for Tiffany, the ‘80s pop idol whose cameo SyFy plugged endlessly in teasers? Her character is the most worthless in the movie, and she sets women back 200 years. Though she knows the piranha better than anybody else—at least according to the script—she invariably winds up in hysterics during action scenes, while Jason takes practical steps to deal with the piranha.

She gears up for another round of tears.

 Vitamin B-SFX: 75%

The piranha change size from scene to scene—look, they’re as big as a house! Wait, now they’re smaller than clown cars! Oh, now they’re the size of blue whales!

Not only do the fish shrink ‘n’ grow—they eat steel! Watch them devour entire battleships! They’re also made of steel scales that enable them to survive utterly fake-looking explosions. Have I mentioned that the piranha also explode on contact when they jump into buildings?

If you get a chance to watch the movie yourself, try to keep track of how many times the same piranha shots are reused. (Don’t make a drinking game out of this, or your liver will disintegrate.)

Vitamin Fun: 80%

As with all Syfy Original Movies, this one has a few completely boring scenes. But the piranha action, the colonel’s “acting,” and Jason’s total manliness outweigh the dull bits. Many of the scenes are hilarious—the piranha scenes guarantee a good laugh.

Sugar: 5%

There is some forced romance at the very end, but this movie understands what its purpose in life is: give the audience as much goofy piranha action as possible.

Plot Fiber: 0%

I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count all the holes…but here are a few:

1) How can a mud dam hold back steel-eating piranha with the ability to leap over multi-story buildings?

2) Why did Tiffany pick PIRANHA for her experiments?

3) Why would nuclear weapons be particularly helpful against piranha, if the piranha are spread out in the Atlantic Ocean?

4) The ending. It’s tradition for b-movie monsters or their offspring to survive for sequels, but Mega Piranha doesn’t even try to convince its audience that most of the fish are dead. They all seem suspiciously alive and well at the end.

SUPPLEMENTS:

Pseudoscience Pill

How the heck can the piranha keep up their exponential rate of growth? That was the single biggest scientific question the movie raised in my mind. (I’ll politely ignore the “shrinkage” caused by scaling issues.) If I followed the movie’s reasoning, there should be no life within a 100-mile radius of the piranha. They grew so quickly that I found myself wondering if they could suck nutrients straight out of the air through their scales.

It’s pretty basic biology—all living things need a steady influx of nutrients to provide the energy necessary to maintain their bodies, and food consumption jumps during growth periods. (As anyone who has lived with teenagers can attest to.) If this movie had followed the science, the piranha would have quickly run out of adequate food sources and started dropping like mega-flies, or eating each other. Ah, but I’m forgetting that these piranha also eat STEEL, which must be an energy bonanza!

"Your Mega Piranha will need five helpings of steel per day. And lots of hugs."

Tiffany gives us more Mega Piranha “facts” throughout the movie, such as: 1) they are hermaphroditic; 2) they have somehow grown “new organs”; 3) the humans can’t try poisoning or electrocuting the fish, because those methods might make the fish “breed like rabbits”; 4) the fish gestate in six hours; and 5) they absorb nutrients through their skin. (This doesn’t answer my question of whether they can get nutrients out of the air, though.) The best part is that Tiffany came to the last two conclusions through a thirty-second analysis of a tiny water sample.

Oh, and the best of all? The piranha are impervious to nuclear weaponry, and in fact, nukes make them bigger and stronger.

Likelihood of choking: 100%

Political Pill

Colonel Diaz serves as a cartoon version of Hugo Chavez, and the movie plays him against the American characters—with the Americans being the good action heroes, of course.

The UN gets a mention as well. The UN sponsors Tiffany’s experiments, which are focused on increasing protein sources in the Amazon. Thus Tiffany tries to grow bigger fish, resulting in the stars of our movie. I’d hope the real UN would never try such a thing with piranha, of all fish—especially when the Syfy magic dust hangs in the air.

That said, the pseudoscience is far more likely to make your brain explode than the politics. You have been warned.

Likelihood of choking: 65%