Review: DEEP BLUE SEA

‘DEEP BLUE SEA’ SINKS TO THE BOTTOM

(reviewed at amc marple 10 on thursday, July 29th, 1999 with jack n mom)

    And I thought the stupidest thing this summer was Jar Jar. ‘Deep Blue Sea’, however, proves its worth as a contender in the race for stupidest movie ever.
    The initial reason for making this extreme popcorn film was probably to capitalize on ‘Jaws’. Last year we moviegoers had to sit through TWO asteroid films and TWO computer generated bug films. The year before there were TWO volcano films. Everything is copied these days, and since it seems the majority of Hollywood has run out of ideas, they’re copying great films from way back.
    Just to prove that ‘Deep Blue Sea’ doesn’t have much to do with ‘Jaws’, they’ve changed the one shark into three, the killings into pure bloodbaths, the quiet Nantucket isle into a Mexican Waterworld-esque hi-tech underwater hangar, and the great characters from that Spielberg film into cardboard cutouts spewing awful dialogue while acting on every cliché in the book.
    But we can’t forget ‘Jaws’. If it wasn’t for that we wouldn’t have to be force fed shit like ‘DBS’ and told that it’s actually a movie. No it’s not, ‘DBS’ is a disaster, a mess, a reason to hate films, a reason to get up and do something about it. With ‘DBS’ and ‘WWW’, and ‘The General’s Daughter’, and even ‘The Phantom Menace’, popcorn films are at the worst they’ve ever been.
    The ridiculous back story of ‘DBS’ involves some lucky scientists who are finding a cure for alzheimers by enlarging sharks brains. There is a laboratory in the middle of the Pacific near Mexico’s Baja peninsula where they have the sharks caged and where they test them.
    Samuel L. Jackson plays one of the big wigs who shows up to see how the tests are going. It just happens that he was in a horrible avalanche earlier in his life and managed to survive. The others that work at the sight are more or less shark bait- I mean they’re not famous actors, except for LL Cool J who plays a cook with a foul mouthing parrot and a high IQ but scared shitless Michael Rappaport who is the movie’s best asset.
    Of course the sharks go on a killing spree…what did you expect? The people attempt to get out of the underwater laboratory while it begins to flood and the sharks enter.
    If you’ve ever seen a Renny Harlin film (‘Clffhanger’, ‘Die Hard 2: Die Harder’, ‘Cutthroat Island’, ‘The Adventures of Ford Fairlane’, and ‘The Long Kiss Goodnight’) then you know his brand of action: big and bold and crazy and seriously unbelievable.
    There’s plenty of action in ‘DBS’, I can say that, but the action is way too ridiculous and silly to actually enjoy. The plot follows a paint by numbers style; they keep getting further and further out as one by one they’re horribly chewed up and destroyed.
    ‘DBS’ probably never had any potential to be a good film. They went out and tried to make everyone happy but ended up with a film even more silly than ‘Batman & Robin’ (okay, maybe not as silly but along the same lines as that colorful disaster). The script is a laughing joke, the special effects are just okay, and the entire film just makes you realize how good ‘Jaws’ really was. *