This week, Howe and Taylor have again chosen to see different movies and review them.
TAYLOR: I watched The Shallows because I wanted to be titillated and horrified at the same time.
I wanted to see if it lived up to the other movies about nasty sharks I have happened to have seen: Jaws, obligatorily the first, then ranging from good to bad with each subsequent sequel. Deep Blue Sea was good but also bad and Sharknado was bad, but in a good way.
The Shallows has everything you want in your shark movie and it’s fairly well executed.
What did you see Pete?
HOWE: I too wanted to be titillated and horrified at the same time and I wasn’t disappointed as I went to see Zac Efron in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.
The movie is littered with some funny stars – Anna Kendrick, Adam DeVine and Aubrey Plaza – and in some parts, the chemistry and laughs are there. It’s just that the other 90 per cent of the movie, they’re not.
The story itself is quite amusing. The boys need wedding dates for their young sisters’ wedding and end up with Alice and Tatiana. The girls end up being just as bad as the lads, if not a little worse.
When the real laughs dry up, the movie is stretched a little thin and predictably relies on cheap gags.
TAYLOR: All I had was one nasty shark, killing people in various terrifying ways and our poor surfer-girl, Nancy (Blake Lively), bruised and broken on a rock, stranded 200 yards from shore.
A couple times, surfers would come by and get eaten, maybe someone would even try to rescue her, but they too become fish food. Finally, being the clever girl that she is, Nancy devises a plan to level the playing field, outsmarting the shark.
The story isn’t the thing that makes The Shallows a fun movie, it’s the primal fear of sharp teeth grabbing you and dragging you down. Anyone could have been stranded on that rock, perhaps more convincingly horrified, but Blake Lively did the best she could and more importantly, so did the shark. If you don’t want to be horrified, don’t go into The Shallows. The first five minutes sets the tone: Wade through the plot, watch for dead eyes in the deep, you will be rewarded.
HOWE: I will not knock MADNWD anymore as I did enjoy it in some parts. I did feel this is one of Efron’s best movies I have seen, and I can’t believe I have just said that.
–Taylor gives The Shallows 3 bowls of soup out of 5.
–Howe gives Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates 2.5 ATV trips out of 5.
– Brian Taylor and Peter Howe are film reviewers based in Vernon. Their column, Reel Reviews, appears in The Morning Star every Friday.