Jersey Shore Shark Attack (2012)

Welcome to the third and final installment of my SHARK ATTACK WEEK TRILOGY. Today we're wrapping up this parade of admittedly pretty bad killer shark creature features. We've played a madman's lame game and survived sharks in the sand, and now we head to the one place on Earth that deserves to get devoured more than any other: The Jersey Shore.

As you could have probably guessed, I have not had a good time with this particular trilogy. It gets pretty exhausting sitting through dreck like this, and I must say that I think I may have foolishly put too much stock in the hope I may have had for these movies. But this last one here, I was more scared of than any of the others. Because while "Jersey Shore Shark Attack" had the most potential for awesomely bad things to happen, it also threatened to be the most obnoxious, too.

I will admit to never having seen a single episode of "Jersey Shore." And there is a good reason for this. I hate the people on it, and they need to be driven back into their holes with fire. Lots of fire. The fact that these people are still breathing means that they have become immune to the anthrax I've been sending them in the mail.

So spending an hour and a half with these jokers, or at least a bunch of actors pretending to be them, wasn't very appealing to me, but an hour and a half of watching them get eaten by sharks, then we might be talking here. That's the only reason I picked this up. I wanted to see them die. A lot.

Quick, mug for the camera harder. I'll tell them you died with your dignity.

There are two things that I can say about "Jersey Shore Shark Attack" that were surprising to me. First was the fact that this is a full blown comedy. I'm not sure why this was a surprise considering the source material, but hey, there it was. I mean, I had an inkling that it would be funny, but this is full-on zany here. And I must admit, if one were to make a movie called "Jersey Shore Shark Attack," the best course of action would probably be to drop any possible form of dignity and just go for the funny ha-ha.

The second thing that surprised me was that, as hard as this is for me to say, I actually found myself...well I can't say "liking it" because that might give too strong of a positive impression. Let it suffice to say that I didn't hate it nearly as much as I thought I would, even though the actors do such a scary good job of imitating the wastes of oxygen they're spoofing that they are actually pretty annoying to watch. And the only reason I say that I didn't hate it was because, as painful as this is to admit to myself and others, it's actually has a reasonable amount of funny stuff in it, because "Jersey Shore Shark Attack" is actually more of a slam on "Jersey Shore" than a love letter, so to speak.

If the movie had made an attempt to treat these clowns with dignity, it wouldn't have worked. Instead, these characters and the lifestyle they live are portrayed as absolutely ridiculous and stupid. These characters are vapid, shallow egomaniacs who can barely walk and digest food at the same time, and the movie never does a whole lot to make you think otherwise, which is good because nobody would have bought it.

If the army put these faces on targets, no soldier would ever miss.

In some ways it kind of reminded me of one those "Fill-In-The-Blank" movies. Stuff like "Scary Movie," "Epic Movie," or "Meet The Spartans," with characters having clever names like Nooki and The Complication. The original show has "Snooki" and "The Situation" for those of you lucky enough to be unaware of that. On the plus side, unlike the "Fill-In-The-Blank" movies, "Jersey Shore Shark Attack" actually has jokes instead of a slew of pointless, unrelated references that have nothing to do with anything besides the fact that it's a pop-culture thing. Because comedy is easy when all you have to do is write down a list of things people know about and display them at random.

"My ears are burning..."

There were some moments that legitimately made me laugh. Foremost amongst them was a moment when one of the characters is trying to get the shark's attention by luring it with a protein bar he naturally had with him. (In fact he had about 10 of them. Why wouldn't he?) When another character remarks that a protein bar probably isn't the best bait for a shark, he responds "Nothing can resist 25 grams of chewy, peanut butter crunch!" And what killed me is not only the fact that it actually ends up working, but that he was just so sincere about the power contained within this instant-energy snack.

While the cast does a fine job being annoying, there are really only two actors of note that make an appearance. The first is Tony Sirico, aka Paulie Walnuts of "The Sopranos" fame. All he does is stand behind a bar, sell absurdly small drinks and tell a story about how the sharks attacked once before. Not surprisingly, he's the one guy here who isn't a cartoon character, but that's mostly because he's still playing Paulie Walnuts.

"Guido, gabagool, Mameluke, cuisina Italiana, big ass sharks, fowgittabowdit. There. We done here?"

I was more excited to see William Atherton pop in and be a big douchebag. After all, when you've got the man who played not only Walter Peck from "Ghostbusters" but also Thornburg from the first two "Die Hard" movies, that's some smarmy asshole gold right there. And to watch somebody condescending to these chuckle-heads is always a pleasure.

As far as the sharks go, yeah they're still CGI. And yeah, they still don't look very good. I suppose the effects are a bit better than the last two, but that's a bar resting comfortably on Terra firma. At least there was a little bit done with practical effects, but that's something that's barely worth mentioning. I'm just so done with fake looking sharks made in a computer.

Sadly, we really haven't progressed much past that in the CGI shark territory.

On the plus side, we do get to see one of the sharks eat Joey Fatone. That was nice.

So in the end, is "Jersey Shore Shark Attack" worth it? Well, it's better than the other two, I guess. Most of this is because there's some funny stuff in it, but it's still bad. In fact, this whole trilogy was bad. I can only recommend them based on how "good" they are relatively speaking. And relatively, this is the best of the bunch.

Which is a bit like saying that extra cat carcass in your burlap sack pillow made all the difference that 3rd night you slept in the gutter.

I'm just glad SHARK ATTACK WEEK TRILOGY is over. I'm so tired.

"Dees sharks representin' Jersey!? No way, brah! Dat's a brotastrophe!"

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Jersey Shore Shark Attack" is admittedly kind of entertaining. It's hands down the only one of these three I would ever watch again, but that's about the nicest thing I can say about it. Perhaps if one were a big fan of "The Jersey Shore," they would enjoy it. Or maybe not. Either way, I really don't care. Watch if you're really really curious, but don't beat yourself up if you skip it.