Sharknado 2: The Second One

And we’re back with another Sharknado review. This time for the second one; Sharknado 2: The Second One. Does anyone else think they missed an opportunity by not naming this one 2Shark2Nado?

For Sharknado I said I wasn’t sure if the writers stopped taking it seriously until the third one. Based on name alone I have to imagine they knew what they were doing here, realizing the first was so good because it was so bad and really leaning into that. That’s my guess at least, I haven’t even clicked play on the remote yet. I’m glad that Ian Ziering and Tara Reid are back to reprise their roles. I expect nothing short of another riveting performance here. Immediately we can see that the writers in fact did not take this one seriously. In the first minutes I’m seeing allusions to Twighlight Zones “There’s something on the wing” and Twin Peaks “It’s happening again”. Bravo.

In the first one it felt like Ian was the only one to actually get a script. For everyone else in the film, the director or an assistant just yelled their line\s right before they started rolling to the actors. This time Tara’a acting is actually notably better. Maybe the director let her read the script this go around.

This one starts with Fin having some sort of shark PTSD. Which I guess comes with the territory of being eaten by one. The Second One moves coasts, taking place in New York City as Fin goes to visit his sister and his brother-in-law who he’s not super fond of. This one takes place in July where a snow-storm is hitting Manhattan. That’s not a typo. This one also is just “Yeah there’s a tornado full of sharks converging on the city” like it’s a normal occurrence. It doesn’t try too hard to over explain what’s going on to the audience. Instead, it allows you to kick right into the insanity of the Sharknado universe.

This one does a lot of what the first one does; however, is decidedly better due to it being in on the joke this time. For the sake of clarity, when I say it does a lot, I do mean a lot.

If you enjoy gratuitous cameos, you’re in for a good time here as they are non-stop. I don’t even want to make note of them just for the fun of “Is that […]?”

New to the cast is Mark McGrath as Fin’s brother-in-law, Martin. Mark McGrath as in the lead singer of rock / pop-punk band Sugar Ray. I had no idea he ever acted before but checking his IMDb, he has credits going back to the mid-90s. I’m not super clear why Fin doesn’t like him aside from them being too much alike and old friends. I mean they do explain it, but the explanation is such a ham-fisted approach at telling us why Fin doesn’t like Martin that I’m stuck still not understanding it anyway. Missing this time is Nova, and Fin and April’s two children. Fin makes a comment about how two of his friends died in the first movie, and I never saw George as so much as friend as a drunk who hung out at the bar so I wonder if they killed off Nova.

Overall I really enjoyed this one. Even more than the first. It’s another low-budget made-for-TV schlock film, but it’s really fun and doesn’t take itself seriously - which is what I’m looking for first and foremost.

Fuck Andy Dick.

Score: 5 New York Mets Big Apple’s. I will not be taking questions.
What kind of score is even that?

Spoiler Review

This film immediately kicks off with “What are they doing”? On the trip from LA to New York, their plane is pelted by sharks. Not as in while they’re coming down. But while they’re 20,000 feet in the air. The movie just yada-yada’s this. And it’s fine. Sharks don’t need water to breathe any longer. Ok, sure.

I expected this entire sequence to be a dream really. April hanging out the plane, Fin landing it, his freaking out seeing sharks next to the plane which the pilots somehow didn’t see until one smacks the cockpit glass, April losing a hand. But no, it’s actually happening in the movie. They really went full throttle with the crazy right out the gate. I was thinking they’d ease into it but they went guns-a-blazing.

Fuck Andy Dick.

It’s insane that even in the universe of this movie, a Shark-icane is now basically a normal thing. The news treats it as just a “Yup, there’s going to be falling sharks today so be sure to bring an umbrella if you’re going outside.” Like I said above, they really go out of their way to not explain their universe to the audience. And it’s so over-the-top that it works. This can’t be explained, so just run with it.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really understand Deux Ex Machina until watching this movie where the problem of Fin’s brother-in-law being at the Mets game is solved by April hiding a ticket for him. I’ve always known what Deus Ex Machine is, but just didn’t “get it”. But now I do. Thanks, Sharknado! You really have to love when things just magically have a solution.

I guess this movie was shot in the winter. Early on in the film they say that it’s July and that a free snow storm is coming in from the north. But in plenty of shots early in the film we can see small snow banks from snow that’s been plowed into corners of the streets of NYC. Even Ellis Island, when the girls are seeing Lady Liberty, you can see some small piles of snow off to the sides where the grounds crew must have shoveled up. I do wonder when The Met’s game was filmed though. That must be either early in the year when it was cold but warming up, or towards the very end when it was cooling down. In the stands during the game we can see plenty of people wearing t-shirts and light jackets. Meanwhile they’re showing people in tight shots as wearing winter hats and heavy jackets. But also, it never does actually snow during the movie. We see a few flurries, but they drop the plot line of the snow pretty quickly and the weather just kind of ends up being dreary instead.

We got a CGI gator in the sewer. My first thought was “What is this, a crossover episode?” My second thought, as a Florida man, was “We need Gatorzzard.”

I’ll admit that I didn’t know Judd Hirsch was well known for his role on Taxi. It’s not a show I’ve dug into a lot. I’ve watched the first few episodes of the series and enjoyed it well enough, I just never invested the time into it. So it’s a neat callback to having him as the taxi driver for those who are familiar with the show. Although since this movie… jumped the shark… I was expecting a “You’d all be dead if it wasn’t for my Finley!” from him. Speaking of, I can’t believe they dropped the “jump the shark” joke so quickly. Did they not expect 2 to do good numbers on SyFy and thus figured shoehorn it in now? They could have saved this joke for a few years / movies down the line. But instead we got it an hour into 2.

Here’s a major gripe for this film. Do people in this universe fail to think? I get that a Sharknado is a… unique situation. One you can’t plan for. But you also understand (and they note in the movie very clearly) that it’s being caused by the storms and that there’s massive storm surge rolling in. In the hospital they're telling everyone to get to the basement immediately. Meanwhile floodwaters are rising and they’re going to move to the lowest part of any building they get into. The basement. Likewise, Fin is said to be the smart one of the family, but he tells his brother-in-law and nephew to get to the lobby of the hotel, get away from windows, and don’t move. The lobby. Which is on ground level. Which is where the storm surge will first come in. Again, I get it; dumb shlock, but these characters just fail to think at all and it’s kind of infuriating that nobody thinks meanwhile they all have brilliant ideas to solve the underlying issue.

I was also annoyed by the tease of more third act relationship drama between Fin and Skye. They already showed that Fin and April have reconciled. Even if they keep saying they’re exes - they’re holding hands on the plain, she’s going to visit his family with him, she even wrote his book. Why do we need to do the drama again of a potential different interest? I’m glad Skye got sucked out, well, into the sky, and that her role in the movie was over once she helped freeze the tornado.

The cameos were a lot of fun. Did I mention fuck Andy Dick? But the most important question that I took away from this film is - What accent is Kurt Angle going for? I mean I have to assume he was going for a New York accent. But he laid it on way too thick. He has natural charisma. As you may have seen, I’m a big wrestling fan (and if you haven’t seen it yet, scroll up to the header and click on Wrestling!) and was watching from his debut to his eventual leaving the WWE. I know the dude doesn’t have to try. The laid on accent here was rough and Kurt would have sounded more believable just speaking like himself. It’s true!

At one point the news report says that there may be as much as 2 inches of sharks per hour. That seems.. like not very much? I was unable to find info on how high a shark is since they’re measured from back to front. Granted I did one search and scrolled down one result and gave up. But still, a shark is going to be higher than 2 inches. 2 inches of shark coming down an hour means.. a shark every few hours?

I had received a bit of a spoiler about limb loss. I didn’t expect that a main character would lose a limb so early on in the film or series. I especially didn’t expect that April would lose a limb, nor that it would lead effectively to a “Holy Shit they just went full Evil Dead!” moment. Seeing her walk up with a circular saw for a hand and using it to decimate a shark was incredible. They just made her out to be a total badass. I can’t wait to see what she does in the next movie.

In another “I wonder if they didn’t expect to even make a third one”, the entire first movie all I could think of was how we need a Doctor Strangelove bomb riding sequence with a shark. I didn’t think we’d get it this soon, yet Fin rides a Shark through the air to safety after getting blown off the building. When I talk about how I love dumb, fun shit in movies, this is exactly what I mean. These movies are not objectively good. There’s plenty of plot holes, poor logic, bad dialogue, just tons of nonsense. But more importantly, they’re so fun to unplug and just watch the madness. Legitimately, I cannot wait to see what they pull out next.

Oh, and fuck Andy Dick.