Jersey Shore Shark Attack (2012)

Overrated and overhyped

hyped garbage

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

With a title like this and the fact it was being broadcast on the SyFy Channel I wasn't expecting a film cruelly passed over at the Academy Awards . I was expecting some dumb entertainment with all the rabidly aesthetic appeal of BAYWATCH To be honest dumb entertainment where you have to switch your brain off is something I did get but the main disappointment is how on earth can a bunch of young women running around in bikinis be so unattractive ? The main bimbo is Nooki ( Stop laughing ) is under the impression that a man is only attracted to a women if she has a bronze skin tone . Let me speak on behalf of 3.5 billion men and state that beauty comes from the inside and not out of a bottle of instant suntan solution . Nooki's suntan is even more distracting and unconvincing than the CGI used in the movie

Jersey Shore Shark Attack is set in the small town of Seaside Heights on the Jersey Shore where Italian Guido TC (Jeremy Luke) & his mates live & hang out, while having a fight with Bradford (Grant Harvey) & some rich preppy boy friends from the local yachting club. A Guido named JP (Ben Giroux) is chased & jumps into the Ocean where Bradford & his friend leave him, suddenly JP is attacked from below the surface by a vicious white skinned, red eyed albino Shark & killed. Most of us wouldn't be to bothered but TC & his mates are genuinely upset, TC believes that something in the water attacked JP & sets out to prove it to his father who happens to be the Sheriff in Seaside Heights. While performing an open air concert ex N-Sync boy-band member Joey Fatone is eaten by a flying Shark, the wider community now has to believe TC. As the bodies mount up it's up to TC & his Guido companions to save the day & prevent a bloodbath...Directed by John Sheppird this made for television comedy horror spoof premiered on the SyFy Channel both here in the UK & the US before hitting the shops on DVD & Blu-ray, I deliberately described Jersey Shore Shark Attack as a comedy spoof horror although thinking about it I might just have given it far too much credit & in fact it's an absolute shambles of a film but surely no-one could make a film this outrageously bad on purpose could they? Obviously a tongue in cheek light hearted attempt to combine the cheap Sy Fy Channel creature feature with the successful reality based Jersey Shore (2009) television series that follows a group of twenty something's around, right now I will admit that I hate these fly on the wall reality television show's so I have not seen a single second of the awful sounding Jersey Shore series but I have seen what seems like hundreds of those cheap Shark based SyFy Channel creature features & I have to say that I found Jersey Shore Shark Attack utterly awful yet undeniably entertaining & even quite amusing at times. At just under 90 minutes long the script wastes no time & this has a good pace, something utterly stupid or daft is always happening so you will be in a constant state of hysterics & disbelief at what you are witnessing. Jersey Shore Shark Attack is the sort of film that defies any sort of rational description, you simply have to see it to understand how awful it is & how embarrassing it is. The character's are all dumb stereotypical idiots & I assume that the airhead Nooki is a send-up of the real life Jersey Shore participant Snooki, the dialogue is terrible (did he drowned?) & the whole premise is lazy & has been done before. There's the killer Shark's, the rich businessman & town mayor who refuse to shut the beach down because of fear of bad publicity & the stand-up Sheriff who puts himself on the line. Character's behave in ways that are totally idiotic & I was actually rooting for the Shark's who were the innocent victims here in this tragic tale of environmental destruction & social behaviour.The special effects are absolutely awful, the shark attacks are CGI computer animated & next to no effort was made to even place the Shark's & actor's in the same scene or to make footage of the two even match during the same scene. Jersey Shore Shark Attack is badly made by people who look like they don't really care. There's a bit of gore, a guy has his hand bitten off & a fountain of blood spurts everywhere, there's a mangled torso & some guy is attacked as a Shark jumps out of the water & has his stomach torn open & skin ripped off his body. The rest of the attacks are pitiful, even the blood in most of the attacks is CGI, how cheap is that? The film is very bright & colourful with no thought on creating any sort of atmosphere or scares or tension, it's very kitsch & exaggerated.Filmed mainly in California there's an appearance by Joey Fatone in a funny cameo & the entire cast seem to having fun with the one-liners & silly poses, the so bad it's good acting from the cast is probably the best aspect of Jersey Shore Shark Attack & makes it a total laugh riot from start to finish.Jersey Shore Shark Attack is absolutely terrible, it's not a proper film it's a collection of awfully directed scenes & rubbish CGI effects held together by a game cast & an amusing script that actually has some wit. Don't rush out & buy it but I was entertained in a very strange sort of way. Now, a reality based television series in which the cast of the actual Jersey Shore are attacked & eaten by killer Shark's is definitely something I would pay good money to see...

Spoof of Jersey Shore, and Jaws is just as utterly ridiculous as it sounds, yet still the most fun that I've had with a SyFy film in quite some time. The preppies and guidos, usually mortal enemies must team up to fight off hungry albino sharks off the east coast over the fourth of July weekend. Some nice gory deaths, funny moments (admittedly juvenile humor but I chuckled none the less) and a pace that never dulls combine for a good time, all the better if you have cold beer on hand. Made for Syfy movies have been pretty dire as of late so this was a much needed change of pace.

Despite my general dislike for SyFy movies, I did tune in to Jersey Shore Shark Attack to see how it would parody one of the biggest nadirs of any TV programme of recent times. I wouldn't say Jersey Shore Shark Attack is a great movie, but I find it more watchable and entertaining than the show. There are some saving graces, some decent scenery, the clever Jaws theme queue during Quint's speech, the brief performance of Joey Fatone and his death scene and the more than admirable performance of Jack Scaglia who has always come across as conscientious no matter how bad the film is. However, I can't say much about the rest of the cast. Paul Sorvino doesn't have that much to do and phones in his performance, while Tony Sirico and William Atherton's turns are not bad in performance but all too brief to make a bigger impression.The Jersey Shore cast act in a very exaggerated fashion, and in the case of Vinny Guadagnino and the girl playing Snooki annoyingly so in alternative to hilariously. The sharks don't fare much better either sadly, their designs are some of the phoniest I've seen in any SyFy movie recently and they are not very menacing. They don't seem to move very naturally, I wasn't sure whether it was the fault of the editing, which was choppy, or the sharks themselves, but there seemed to be a lot of jumping around in their later scenes especially. The death scenes have been worse in previous movies definitely, but they're still rather predictable and lacking tension(Fatone's was the best one), and I was disappointed that the annoying characters weren't killed off.Anybody expecting dumb, blatantly silly storytelling and logic being thrown out the window won't be disappointed in Jersey Shore Shark Attack. There are two instances involving the sharks where you do have to suspend disbelief, one where you are told that in order to kill a shark you shoot through its left eye as it's the eye of the devil, and another where you learn that a shark can be killed by being shot through its fin. And then there are sub-plots that are not only not that interesting but make the characters more unlikeable than they already are, such as the slobs vs. snobs subplot. It does deserve credit though that unlike other SyFy movies the pacing doesn't manage to be dull. The characters are deliberate caricatures certainly, but because the performances are so exaggerated and stereotypical I did find it hard to care for them.In regard to the dialogue, that is also very corny that is full of Jersey-ese and supposedly tongue-in-cheek catchphrases, that depending on who you are may make you tear your hair out in irritation. I do agree that the basic tone of the film does feel like a genre movie rather than part of SyFy's output, though there is enough of SyFy's notorious trademarks(ie. the special effects) to remind us that it is actually SyFy. Overall, I didn't find Jersey Shore Shark Attack a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but I did find it entertaining, even if it is often stupid with annoying characters, blatant silliness in both the story and script and cheap effects. 4/10 Bethany Cox