Film review: supersized shark movie The Meg
Image: The Meg
Despite all the blood in the water, this supersized fish tale is nowhere near as fun or frenzied as you'll want it to be
Imagine a trashy empty-calories combo of Sharknado and the gore-and-nudity-heavy Piranha 3D – two horror movies loaded with lovable dumbness. Then dial back those expectations by several nautical miles, deep into mild PG-13 territory, and you have The Meg, a disappointment for fans of pure summer nonsense (I count myself proudly among them). Developed over decades from a 1997 Michael Crichton–lite science-fiction novel by Steven Alten, the movie is a Jurassic-sized pretender, summoning a 75-foot Megalodon shark – the movie’s CGI is somewhat watery – but little in the way of menace, suspense or even goony laughs.
https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=a07097r21p1&width=500&height=375&auto=0
Video: The Meg trailer via QQ
No one is coming to The Meg for originality, but connoisseurs of Jason Statham’s lunkheaded charms will find his portrayal of Jonas – a guilt-ridden rescue diver who thinks he’s quit the game until his ex-wife gets trapped on the bottom of the Mariana Trench – limited. (The mope-ragey Sylvester Stallone of Cliffhanger would have killed in this.) Accompanying Jonas to a high-tech underwater research station off the Chinese coast are a wise-cracking billionaire investor (Rainn Wilson, soaking his every line in ironic geekery and spoiling the mood) and a sombre team of scientists led by Suyin (Li Bingbing), a single mum with an adorable tyke in tow.
The funniest moments are fleeting, like the creature’s enormous dorsal fin – as huge as a tent – displacing water with a sound louder than a motorboat, or someone uttering the trailer-ready bit of ridiculousness, 'Are you saying we opened a superhighway for giant sharks?' Mainly, though, this mega-production, frequently subtitled and just this side of cheesy, makes you feel like you’re watching a foreign film; even when the characters are speaking English, they seem dubbed (or drugged). The immortal Jaws works because it injects pop-Moby Dick monologues and technical solidity into the mix. The Meg proves only that, at least cinematically speaking, great-white movies may have finally jumped the shark.
The Meg
On general release in cinemas. Extract QR code to book tickets.