Sharknado 2: The Second One Review

Sometimes, a critic can have no words for a movie. Sometimes, a critic's role can be completely unnecessary when they're telling you about a movie. That's because sometimes, just sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover and you can infer a movie's quality based solely on its title. Sharknado 2: The Second One is one of those movies. It is so bad, so absolutely stupid, that it is probably the greatest action movie of the summer.

You know, who even cares about the plot of Sharknado 2 anyway? A tornado of sharks hit New York City. Boom! That's all you need to know going into it. Everything that follows is probably some of the stupidest, most hilarious action scenes since Commando. We're talking about a movie where a major action scene is the Statue of Liberty's head being torn off and rolling down the street like a bowling ball, crushing cars and purposefully chasing our main characters because sharknadoes are intelligent now. Sure, why not?

To illustrate my point about how rock stupid, yet incredibly awesome this movie is, I'm just going to recount to you the first 10 minutes of the movie. If you're that serious about not having Sharknado 2 spoiled for you, then read on after the first picture, cause here we go.

So, two of our main characters from the first Sharknado, Fin and April, are on a plane heading to NYC. One of the flight attendants, played by Kelly Osbourne, is a huge admirer of them and asks them to sign April's book titled "How to Survive a Sharknado". As soon as the book gets signed though, Fin sees what he thinks are sharks outside the plane and the movie proceeds to doing a complete homage to the Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", the episode where William Shatner thinks he sees a monster on the wing of the plane. In this case though, there actually is a shark on the wing of the plane, and the plane flies directly into a sharknado filled with thousands of sharks, and all of them start attacking the plane. The pilots get eaten, Kelly Osbourne, Will Wheaton, and a random person in the bathroom gets decapitated, the engines explode, a hole is torn in the side of the plane, April gets her hand eaten off as she tries to shoot a shark in the tornado, and Fin is able to land the plane, even though he's never flown a plane before in his life. While landing, he dryly says "Welcome to New York" before the title credits roll. That's the kind of movie we're talking about here.

I WANT THIS SO BAD

In its entire run time, the goal of the movie seems to pretty much be top everything the original did. Right from the beginning, the sharknado hits and makes the movie absolutely insane! Literally, the way that sharks are killed in this movie is so over the top and so non sensical that it's sheer brilliance. And no, this isn't me being snarky just for the sake of snarkiness, I had more fun enjoying this insane movie than I have in the past several months! How could you not enjoy a movie where a shark falls into a pizzeria, is stabbed by Biz Markie, then is hit with a pizza pan into a pizza over to cook? How could you not love that!?

How could you not love a movie where they take a few minutes out of the movie to give a backstory for a baseball player that we've never heard of and is given such a sad and serious backstory. He's at Citi Field and he never was able to hit a homerun for his dad during his last game. So lo and behold, when the sharknado hits, sharks start falling into Citi Field, and this supposedly legendary baseball player takes a baseball bat and hits the shark out of the stadium screaming "THIS IS FOR YOU POPS!" This is just legendarily awesome in every single regard.

Logic does not exist in this movie. Hell, logic never existed in this franchise to begin with, but now it's just completely gone. Flaming sharks are a new occurrence that people have to deal with in this movie. FLAMING. SHARKS. And of course, the sharknado is now intelligent and is trying to hunt Fin and April down because... revenge? I have no earthly idea. What kills me though is the fact that every fifteen minutes or so, the movie with cut to actual news stations giving weather updates about the sharknado and its projected path.

What does this even mean???

Now, if you'll pay close attention to the picture above, you will see the Weather Channel giving moment by moment updates to the incoming sharknado and also explain just what will happen when the sharks will hit. At 2:00 p.m, according to the movie, sharks are expected to fall at a consistent rate of two inches per hour. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEANS??? I have racked my brain for days trying to figure out what that phrase means? How do sharks fall at two inches per hour? What is even the two inches? Is it the sharks? Well if can't be since sharks are larger than two inches obviously. Is it the rain? It can't be because they clearly say that sharks will fall at two inches per hour. Is it over the span of New York so that when the storm is going on, all of New York will be covered in at least two inches of sharks? What does that mean? I don't even know meteorology, and this makes no sense! WHAT DOES TWO INCHES OF SHARKS PER HOUR MEAN???

It gets better though! All of these weather reports actually use respected news anchors to talk about the sharks. Weather Channel is used, The Today Show, Kelly and Michael, all of these news shows are used and all of them get in on the shark killing action. Hell, Michael Strahan catches a shark and throws it out of his studio! What??? AL Roker and Matt Lauer stab a shark in their studio on camera. It is absolute insanity what I had to watch.

And did I mention that there are a ton of cameos in this movie? I won't say who does what, but in this movie, besides the news reporters,  we have Perez Hilton, Vivica A. Fox, Andy Dick, Billy Ray Cyrus, Jared Fogle, Judd Hirsch, Kelly Ripa, Richard Kind, Daymond John, and all of the other celebrities I mentioned before. They don't do anything, but they add so much to the stupidity by them being there. They usually only have a line or two, but just their presence in all of this is so incredible. And most of them get killed in glorious fashions, and I do mean glorious.

This is one of the tame killings

 The first Sharknado, strictly looking at it as a terrible movie, had a lot of pacing problems. It had a weak middle half while we waited for all of the insanity to come, so there were long periods of time where we had to go through, gasp!, character development! You don't go to see a movie called Sharknado for the character development. While the first one had pacing problems, this movie just has balls to the wall action nonstop. Every scene has a big kill or sometime bone crushingly stupid happen during it, and it's just incredible to watch. The climax itself is so stupid, so bullshit, so impossible, that it will go down in history as one of the most badass and awesome action scenes in bad movie history.

Was there anything even wrong with this movie to begin with? Well everything is awful first and foremost, but it's the special kind of awful where you can't hate it. What makes a good terribad movie is it's a movie that is so awful and so amateurish that it transcends all sensibilities and reaches nirvana in a sense. It becomes more than it is when taken out of context and makes it something that every can enjoy, if only to get a laugh out of it. Look at The Room and Birdemic, which are classic terribad movies. They're awful, but they're still enjoyable because of how hilarious they can be if you take what you're seeing out of context. When I saw this movie, I didn't say "Hmm, how will Fin be able to stop the sharknado this time?" I was thinking, "This man is shooting explosives on a slingshot into a sharknado!!! THAT'S INCREDIBLE!"

No joke, I enjoyed this movie just as much as Guardians of the Galaxy! I think Guardians is better of course, but that still doesn't mean this movie isn't as good. Guardians gave me a great sci-fi action comedy, while this movie just gave me a ton of laughs. Screw the genre, it just made me cry laughing. I enjoyed both of them, and I'm blown away by how brain bashingly stupid this movie is, but how much fun it is to watch. You know you're having a great time with a movie when you want to see more flaming sharks fall from the sky.

Sharks and baseball bats on the 7 Train. Yes.

This is a perfect mixture of absolute crap and pure genius. This is going to go down in history as one of the best worst movies of all time. It doesn't take itself serious, the effects are awful, the script is awful, the weather effects make no sense, but by God we're going to take it super duper seriously! We're going to be serious as we throw bombs at sharks, chainsaw them, and get a mob of angry New Yorkers to raise arms against the sharknado. Just imagine; a mob of hundreds of New Yorkers fighting against sharks as they fall from the sky by throwing chainsaws in the air, shooting machine guns at them, flinging machetes around, and using super soaker flame throwers to burn the flaming sharks. This is glorious! This must be seen! This is Sharknado 2: The Second One!

           

Please please please please please please please please please please let there be a Sharknado 3!