Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Television
Bigger, badder, bitier: Sharknado 3 is here.
In my 22 years of covering television for the newspaper, I can say without equivocation that Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! is the silliest, most ridiculous, most improbable TV movie I have ever seen.
It’s also one of the most fun, and the perfect antidote for a world filled with grim news.
The highly anticipated third film following the first two Sharknado movies airs at 8 p.m. Wednesday on Syfy. Invite some friends and make an evening of it.
I would say make a drinking game out of every time a shark chomps somebody, but you’d be on the floor inside of 10 minutes.
Syfy bills this as “the most important event of 2015.” Why not? If destroying Los Angeles and New York was not enough in the first two films, well, the entire Eastern seaboard is plagued with a plague of flying sharks in Sharknado 3.
“Questions will be answered!” Syfy promises. “But mostly sharks get blown up.”
In reality, the film is one huge infomercial for Universal Orlando Resort in Florida, where the final carnage takes place.
The action begins in Washington and chews its sanguinary way down to Orlando. It’s a TV-14 bloodbath, but your gag reflex ought not to be strained too much because the gore is almost on a comic level.
Let’s back up for those out of the ’Nado loop.
The original Sharknado debuted on Syfy in July 2013 with modest expectations. After all, Syfy was a familiar home to cheesy disaster flicks such as Sharktopus (2010), Piranhaconda (2012) and Megapython vs. Gatoroid (2011).
That last one featured ’80s pop stars Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, along with anabolic steroid-fueled mutant ’ gators fighting giant pythons in the Everglades. It was wonderful. Sharknado was expected to be just another in a long line of such fare starring washedup actors just happy to get a paycheck.
In this case, they were erstwhile Beverly Hills, 90210 heartthrob Ian Ziering as bar owner Fin Shepard and Tara Reid ( American Pie) as April Wexler, Fin’s ex-wife.
The basics: A freak tornado scoops up thousands of sharks and dumps them on a panicked Los Angeles. Fin breaks up the storm and saves the day.
The thrilling climax is the final scene where a chainsaw-wielding Fin leaps into the mouth of a giant shark and cuts his way out, rescuing his swallowed bartender Nova Clarke (Cassie Scerbo).
The movie, made for a modest $2 million, was an instant cult hit. A sequel was quickly ordered.
Sharknado 2: The Second One, set in New York, premiered in July 2014.
In this one, Fin and April are flying to New York to promote a book April has written about the Los Angeles sharknado.
Storm-tossed sharks smash into the plane, kill passengers and the pilots and bite off April’s hand. Fin lands the plane and the rest of the movie is one chomp after another before a chainsaw-wielding Fin saves the day and proposes to April with the ring from her severed hand.
The big climax: A giant tank of Freon at the top of the Empire State Building is connected to the lightning rod and the storm is destroyed. The sharks rain down where scrappy New Yorkers battle them in the streets.
By the time the sequel came around, lots of actors clamored to have cameos. No. 2 featured quite a few, but No. 3 has many more — too many to mention them all.
But to name a few, businessman and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban portrays the president of the United States. Political commentator Anne Coulter plays the vice president.
Tea Party queen Michele Bachmann appears as herself, as do novelist Jackie Collins, Kathie Lee Gifford, Hoda Kotb, Matt Lauer and Al Roker.
Robert Klein is the mayor of New York. Lou Ferrigno, Ne-Yo and Grant Imahara (from Myth Busters) play Secret Service agents. Jerry Springer is a frantic tourist. Penn and Teller are retired NASA officers. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner is a NASA official. The list goes on. Having a bigger role is Malcolm in the Middle star Frankie Muniz as Lucas Stevens, a friend of Nova’s.
Sharknado fans will have noticed that Scerbo ( Make It or Break It) was missing from the second film. In the third outing, Scerbo’s Nova is back. My theory is that they wanted to add younger sex appeal to the show, and Scerbo doesn’t disappoint.
Those who love aging sex symbols will also be pleased that David Hasselhoff ( Baywatch) is on board as Fin’s dad, astronaut Gil Shepard, and Bo Derek ( 10) plays the pregnant April’s mother, May Wexler.
If you want to feel old, The Hoff is 62 these days and Derek is 58. Either Hasselhoff is playing older or Ziering is playing younger, because Ziering is an impressively ripped 51.
I’d go into more of the plot but, seriously, it doesn’t matter.