Arctic air equals more sharks!

SHARKNADO 2: THE SECOND ONE (2014)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Sharknado 2: The Second One" may as well have been directed by the ZAZ (Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker) comedy team - it is suffused with lots of jokes though the comic timing is frequently off. It is meant to be a bad movie, a fitfully enjoyable one at that but a bad movie on purpose. It is ten times better than the original SyFy hit that had more lulls than Tara Reid's horrendous line readings - it is stupider, zanier and damn right insanely over-the-top.

Not much of a plot here. Ian Ziering and Tara Reid are Fin and April, the divorced couple from the original, who are on a booking tour for a best-selling book April wrote called "How to Survive a Sharknado." While on a plane trip, a sharknado occurs and sharks burst through the plane and kill pilots, passengers and stewardesses, including a sweet cameo by purple-haired Kelly Osbourne. Fin lands the plane safely in New York City where they hope to meet their relatives. But no sooner before one can say, "Jump the Shark!" (an actual line of dialogue in the film), Fin gets in action-hero mode and straps on a chainsaw ready to kill the sharks who are steadily approaching the Big Apple in not one but two tornados! God forbid if those two tornados clash into the Empire State Building which amazingly, through the sheer act of magical intuition, Fin figures out and decides to...well, see the movie and you will see how the film literally jumps the shark.

"Sharknado 2" has a plethora of cinematic in-jokes from "Star Wars," "Kill Bill," "Airplane!" (Robert Hays cameo included), James Bond and various cameos from Judd Hirsch doing a semi-reprise of his "Taxi" character, to Wil Wheaton and Perez Hilton and the hosts of "Live with Kelly and Michael," to Matt Lauer and Al Roker playing it very straight from the "Today" set as they do a running commentary on sharknados, apparently being pushed by arctic air (Global Warming, much?). There a host of other cameos but Hirsch and Lauer and Roker rock the boat.

Crazier, loopier, dumber than people who film actual tornados in the Midwest, and full proof that Tara Reid cannot carry a line of dialogue with much conviction, "Sharknado 2" is not for cineastes or even B-movie lovers. It is for lovers of Z cinema, the lowest of lows of cinematic crudity. Decapitations and amputations litter the screen (including the Statue of Liberty's head, more thrillingly executed in "Cloverfield" but, hey, that one is a B movie) and bad special-effects rule the day. Ziering seems to love killing sharks and Tara packs a saw in a bit cribbed from "Grindhouse," which may been cribbed from exploitation films of the 70's. There are still some lulls and not quite as many angry sharks as I had hoped (though there is a subliminal hark back to "Jaws the Revenge" involving April that made me laugh) but I can't hate a movie where Fin proposes to April with a ring still found in the...well, it is priceless and inspired.