After eons of sharks, we’re gonna need a bigger ocean
Have sharks jumped the Fonzie? Seems like it’s always Shark Week around here, and “here” means everywhere.
Think of how long it has been since the first “Jaws” (1975). A digital-effects revolution and a generation later, “Deep Blue Sea” (1999) closed out the century with some forgetably entertaining (or entertainingly forgetable) jump scares in between what filmmakers believed to be necessary expository information about the people lining up at the human buffet for the shark’s benefit. In the cheeseball screwball realm, the sixth “Sharknado” picture comes out later this year.
And higher up the food chain, now we have “The Meg,” director Jon Turteltaub’s forgetably entertaining/entertainingly forgetable adaptation of the 1997 novel by Steve Alten.
Alten’s book led to six published sequels, and Alten called his moneymaker simply “Meg,” without the “The.” The movie version steers clear of camp or self-parody, and it’s acted by a strong, poker-faced international ensemble with a seriousness of purpose that’s spelled J-A-S-O-N-S-T-AT-H-A-M. In other words, it leaves the sharknados to “Sharknado,” even though it imagines an equally improbable scenario: the existence of a prehistoric 75-foot megalodon shark.
From the barge-sized predator’s point of view, “The Meg” is essentially “And Then There Was Lunch.” Shot off the coasts of New Zealand and China, director Turteltaub’s film concerns the exploratory doings of a lavish underwater research facility bankrolled by a billionaire weasel (Rainn Wilson). The facility, known as Mana One, looks like a particularly pricey Lego set, all hallways and tubes and clear-walled walkways.
Six miles beneath the Pacific Ocean surface, a team of oceanographers and experts discovers an entire hidden ecosystem laden with species “completely unknown to science.” But Meg comes calling, attacking the submersible piloted by the ex-wife (Jessica McNamee) of rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Statham). Years earlier, Jonas lost some men on an undersea expedition when he ran into Meg, freaked out and skedaddled, saving some lives while sacrificing others. No one believed his fish story, so Jonas has fallen into a life of dissolution, drink and back story. But his ex needs saving, so ….
That’s the first of many complications in the busy, smartly paced script by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber. “The Meg” is a family affair, fraught with parental concerns. Li Bingbing plays Suyin, marine biologist, whose young daughter (Sophia Cai) has already lost her dad and sees the arrival of Jonas as promising news all around. Suyin’s oceanographer father (Winston Chao) worries about Suyin’s safety; meantime, Suyin takes one look at Jonas’ abs in a sketchily motivated post-shower scene and thinks, yes, yes, promising, yes.
Statham is the lust object in “The Meg,” all right, though the Rainn Wilson character lusts for profits, and Meg lusts for the thrill of the hunt. Once the big shark surfaces and heads toward a heavily populated swimming beach, even going so far as pursuing a teeny-tiny dog named Pippin, “The Meg” threatens to go full “Piranha.”
Gore hounds, go elsewhere: The PG-13 rating keeps this one on the sunny side of
Maybe we’re past all that with sharks. Then again, maybe a terrific shark thriller, as opposed to a fairly good one, can put the mega back in megalodon.