Sharknado 2: The Second One is a movie that gives the audience exactly what they expected. The film follows the amazing social network phenomenon that was the first movie and ended up as the most successful SyFy Network original movie of all time. So, what happened the second time around? Twitter exploded and Sharknado 2: The Second One ended up as the most tweeted about television movie of all time with over ONE BILLION tweets. As for its actual success, 3.9 million people watched it, making it the most watched SyFy Network movie ever.
So, was it worth it? If you love B-movies and brainless humor that just wants to have fun, you will love this movie in spades. If you have no time for stupid low brow humor, you will hate everything about this movie. This review is for the people who watched the movie to laugh.
Fin (Ian Ziering) and April (Tara Reid) are on their way to New York City, which is Fin’s hometown. Fin is suffering through the fame of being the man who helped save Los Angeles from the sharknado, a completely different fame than he enjoyed as a surfer. However, things don’t get very far when their plane hits turbulence and they end up in the middle of a sharknado in the air. While April lands a hand to fight off the sharks, Fin helps land the plane.
This entire opening shows the audience what they can expect. The entire scene is homage to Airplane!. Don’t believe me? They actually cast Airplane! star Robert Hays to play the ill-fated pilot. Kelly Osbourne, Rachel True, Will Wheaton and Kelly Oxford all died aboard the plane as well. With that, the second best thing in this movie after watching the ridiculous shark action is trying to spot cameos.
Through the movie, we get appearances by Andy Dick, Al Roker, Matt Lauer, Sandy “Pepa” Denton, Tiffany Shepis, Judah Friedlander, Judd Hirsch, Jared Fogel, Perez Hilton, Benjy Bronk, Biz Markie, Downtown Julie Brown, Bully Ray Cyrus, Daymond John, Kelly Ripa, Michael Strahan and former WWE superstar Kurt Angle. The best cameo had to be Judd Hirsch, who played a helpful taxicab driver, a wonderful homage to his breakout role on the TV show Taxi.
Anyway, the deal is that two sharknadoes are coming into New York City and they are on a collision course. If they match up, they will create an F5 Sharknado and that could tear down New York City. Luckily, the people of New York City stick together, this according to the mayor (Robert Klein) and they ask Fin to help them stop the sharknadoes, since he did such a bang up job in Los Angeles. Fin, of course, wants to drop bombs into them again since that worked so well last time and the race is on.
The entire movie is ludicrous, but as I said, this review is for people who wanted ludicrous from Sharknado 2: The Second One. I honestly had to stop watching this on numerous occasions to run back to tell my wife what just happened during the movie. It was that awesome. The dumbest kill was when a shark flew into Shea Stadium and a retired baseball player haunted by his final plate strikeout appearance makes up for it by grabbing a baseball bat and knocking the flying shark into the outfield for a home run.
Those are the kind of kills you can expect. There is a scene where a New Yorker throws three running chainsaws into one of the sharknadoes and watches as they whip around slicing up sharks. There is a Matrix styled scene where Fin bends backwards and slices a shark in half. There is a scene where Fin plays Frogger (think the old Atari videogame) across the backs of sharks to get to safety. The head of the Statue of Liberty is also knocked off and rolls in a perfect line down the street (damn physics), killing everything in its path.
These are the wonderful moments that Sharknado 2: The Second One gives its audience.
There are some problems that are not as enjoyable. One is the acting of Tara Reid. Sure, some might get a kick in watching her solemnly say that the shark looked her in the eyes, like it knew her, but it was just too horrible for me. I prefer the ridiculous rally cry of Fin to the citizens of New York to anything that Tara Reid said in the movie. I don’t think I am the only one who wanted Tara Reid to die and let Fin end up with Skye (Vivica A. Fox).
However, at the end of the day, the movie was nothing but big, dumb, brainless, ludicrous Fun – with a capital F. Don’t expect anything more and you should love this movie.