Jersey Shore Shark Attack

There are times you run across a movie and you know, without a doubt, that the cameras would've been better left in the off position. I'm all for skewering the whole 'Jersey Shore' zeitgeist, but in a humorous way, like when Bobby Moynihan dons a wig and orange body spray on 'Saturday Night Live' to lampoon the ever-annoying Snooki. Not with what amounts to a tasteless parody movie that runs parallel to any of the idiotic stuff Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have churned out.

'Jersey Shore Shark Attack' is a mind-numbing exercise. A drill off the coast of the Jersey Shore has, get this, angered a bunch of subterranean dwelling albino sharks. No, I'm not making this up. It's shown in terrible CGI detail during the opening moments of the screen. Awfully animated sharks become angry because their cave of serenity is being invaded by large white lines indicating sound moving through water. Now these red-eyed, white sharks are extremely upset. They would've lived out their days swimming around in darkness not hurting anyone, but this racket is too much to bear. Some people are just gonna have to get ate!

Up on land a group of tanned idiots participate in things that Jersey Shore inhabitants do. Basically this amounts to saying "Dude," at least 350 times a minute, flexing abs, pecs, and deltoids, and getting really, really drunk. How these guys earn money is really a mystery.

The leader of the group is The Complication (Jeremy Luke). His cronies are Paulie Balzac (Daniel Booko) and Donnie (Joey Russo). They live in a swanky apartment, with piles of protein powder jugs on the counters. The Complication (you have no idea how much I loathe writing that out) is a hit with the ladies, even though he's trying to patch things up with his girl Nooki (Melissa Molinaro). Okay, enough about them. Just writing about them is making me depressed.

Anyway, sharks start attacking Italians that happen to be in the water at the time of their surfacing. The albino sharks are pissed and they'll take it out on anyone who appears even remotely tasty. The group of nincompoops discussed above, soon find a bloody torso on the beach and realize there are sharks everywhere. Instead of, you know, showing the ravaged body to the cops the guys decide on something better. Throwing fireworks at the sharks.

So, they run home and pack up their fireworks. (Did I already say how much writing this review is killing me?) They must have some pretty advanced fireworks because the fuses don't instantly extinguish when they hit the water. No, they sink down to a nice depth so a shark can chomp down on them. And then boom goes the dynamite.

For the life of me I can't figure out why respectable actors like William Atherton and Tony Sirico are in this piece of junk. I understand that the movie isn't trying to be serious and is actually making fun of the whole 'Jersey Shore' mentality, but it goes about it in such a stupid way that it never reaches a laugh-worthy moment. This parody of 'Jersey Shore' is just as loathsome as the show itself.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

This is an Anchor Bay release. It's been provided a standard eco-friendly keepcase along with a 25GB Blu-ray Disc. It's marked as Region A only.

Honestly, I'm surprised to say that most of the movie looks quite good and nicely detailed in HD. The 1080p, digitally filmed movie has a lot of fine detail. Pores, rippling abs, and flexing biceps are all fully visible. It's easy to see the fake tans that everyone has here. I hesitate to even comment on whether the skin tones are natural or not, since everyone sports a decidedly orange tint.

The scenes that are really terrible and end up bringing this video presentation back to earth are the CG scenes with the angry albino sharks. Boy those scenes are horrid. Banding runs rampant. Aliasing around the edges is completely noticeable. Noise is apparent. They're just ugly, ugly scenes. You'll be left wondering if they used computer graphics technology from the early 90s.

This Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix features some pretty shoddy work also. The ADR in places is downright atrocious. Even when the soundtrack should be bouncing with hip-hop beats or rumbling under the pressure of the shark-awakening drill, the LFE comes out fairly light.

All the Jersey Shore vernacular you can handle is delivered clearly though the center channels. The rear channels lack any sort of ambient substance that's worthwhile other than a few hoots and hollers during a couple scenes with party-like atmosphere. It's underwhelming to say the least.

• Audio Commentary — I'm not kidding you. There really is one. Although I stopped listening to it about 5 minutes into it after I found out that it sounds like it was recorded on a crappy microphone that was placed away from most of the commentary participants. This is one of the worst recorded audio commentary tracks I've ever heard. It makes it completely useless. If you really must know this track features producers Barry Barnholtz, Jeffrey Schenck, and Peter Sullivan, along with director John Shepphird.
• On Set: 'Jersey Shore Shark Attack' (SD, 5 min.) — A short promo featurette for the movie.

Does "ugh!" about cover it? Do I really need to give you more summation of my thoughts? There are times when cameras are better left off and this is definitely one of those times. 'Jersey Shore' definitely deserves to get roasted but I'll leave that to 'SNL' portraying Snooki as a traffic cone. Now that's funny. If you didn't realize it already this is one to avoid at all costs. In case you're wondering, a shark ate half a star or the average would have been 2.