The Meg lacks a sense of sharkness

The Meg (M, 103 mins) Directed by Jon Turteltaub Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★

If you’ve seen the trailer for The Meg, you already know the plot. Giant shark, undersea base, crowded holiday beaches close by. Yadda yadda. Add a couple of Chinese and Taiwanese superstars (Li Bingbing and Winston Chao), one cute kid and a reliably hard-working action hero (Jason Statham), put it all together with a top Kiwi crew and the result should be an enjoyably silly way to spend your evening, right? Sadly, no.

Back in 1999 (a vintage year, clearly), Deep Blue Sea and Lake Placid handed the world a blueprint for exactly how to make this film. You need a tight cast of real comic talents, a stripped-back narrative and running time, and then don’t pause long enough for the audience to ask any awkward questions.

While the film critics of the world dismissed them both as derivative loads of old rubbish – which they were – those films also had pace to burn and great scenery-chewing beasts such as Samuel L Jackson, Thomas Jane, Oliver Platt and Betty White to keep the tone just as daft and highcamp as it needed to be.

But The Meg finds Statham muted and hamstrung by an overcomplicated script, Cliff Curtis is never allowed out of second gear, and Rainn Wilson is under-used as the billionaire investor who custom dictates will not make it to the final reel.

The effects and technical credits are all terrific. Stripped of the script’s distractions and allowed to go at full throttle for at least the last 60 minutes, The Meg – even with all its Jaws, Orca and Jurassic Park steals intact – could still have been a gloriously unhinged good time.

It nearly gets there. But it’s too slow, too talkative and far too seemingly concerned with being a ‘‘good’’ film, when it should have been embracing all the glorious possibilities of being a great bad one.