Unsurprisingly, the back of the box advertises Shark Attack 3 by claiming that it follows in the proud tradition of Jaws one through like twenty-six. Okay, first of all, I'm not sure it's the best marketing plan to admit your movie is based on another series that is already infamous for the way its sequels follow in the footsteps/wake (given the watery context of this quote) of their predecessors. This isn't really going to score you any originality points. Secondly, you won't get much for accuracy either. In fact, I think it would be more accurate to claim Shark Attack 3 follows in the fine traditions first set forth by Pinocchio. But more on that later.
Before I get too far out to sea, I'd like to take a few moments to describe the movie itself. Hopefully, this will come across as more hilarious than painful, which are coincidently enough the two poles between which the film often jumps, depending almost entirely on whether the shark is currently on camera. Possibly because the sharks are the only things in the film that aren't badly dubbed. I'm not sure what language the movie was originally filmed in (many of the people in the credits appear to be Russian), but it seems pretty clear that the people involved with the dubbing had very little understanding of the english language. And funny voices. Megaladon sounds like the kind of monster that would come from a Godzilla movie, and so do his human co-stars. Anyway, the first half-hour of the movie focuses on a Mexican beach resort and seems mostly intended to make us hate all the human characters in the film. At least, I hope that's what they were intending. This only makes it more exciting when the shark begins ripping them apart. You may be disappointed by the size of this shark, who is classified as only a baby Megaladon, but fortunately he makes up for it by displaying more cunning than anyone in or making this movie. For example, two drunk punks end up falling down the resort's water slide only to find the shark waiting at the bottom. I guess he must view it as some sort of feeding aparatus. At first, the visiting paleontologist wants to ignore all these deaths in the name of science, but eventually she agrees to let the main character hunt the shark with his handgun. She also brings along her toy shotgun and her baseball bat, which prove more effective than one might imagine. Fortunately, the death of the baby Megaladon is only the beginning of the better half of the film, as it cues the arrival of the full-sized Megaladon, who, as the picture above demonstrates, wastes no time in making his presence known.
There's no doubt that the quality of any monster movie is directly proportional to the size of the beast in question. That's really the sort of thing they should put on the back of the box. ("Includes a shark the size of a grayhound-bus!") Indeed, this shark is so big that he doesn't even need to bother biting his victims; he simply swallows them whole. That's where this week's quote comes in, and the Pinnochio references. Anyway, the heroes soon discover that the Megaladons are being agitated by the deep-sea wires of an evil communications company. In a scene of anti-capitalism that seems highly reminiscent of the cold war, a worker at this company violently confronts his boss, claiming he knew about the Megaladons all along! And was probably breeding them to take over the world, too! It would be a plot twist right out of Dino-Riders. Fortunately, the evil chief executive gets a mouthful of justice when his jet-ski drives right into the mouth of the Megaladon, after first claiming that his lawyers are the real sharks. Maybe they'll appear in Shark Attack 4: Megatrial. Hey, the premise can't really be any worse than the ones they've already used. And maybe in that film, the sharks would actually win. Because when they win, so does the audience.
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