Sharknado 2, Taking America By Storm (I Mean Sharknado)

What is the formula for a really high end B movie?

Especially this skeptic

Make it free on cable (prerequisite for me) but include so many has been actors and really famous non-actors, that any viewer

will disregard the fact that sharks can't fly.  Alright, I realize that this is not the attack of super sharks, this is Sharknado 2 (The Second One), but since I never saw The First One, I was expecting to make sense out of these randomly flying sharks that seem to have laser guided attack ability.

Having never viewed the first rendition of this virtual cult film, I found myself more interested in the buzz than anything else.  Following cultural trends is how I'm living these days, so it was difficult to disregard the media circus that lead up to this viewing.  I might have even watched it live with the original Sharknado fans, but my curiosity didn't extend into the realm of remembering the time and date of the program.

No worries!  This is the day and age that a man can grab a comfortable seat outside in the yard and pull up a popular show right from the telephone.  Needless to say, the SyFy channel insured that an  appropriate link to Sharknado 2 (The Second One) was made available as a top selection when I activated my Xfinity app.  Instantly I paused for a moment realizing that I was at that anxious juncture the we all experience in the process of decision making, in which you had better run or you might get lured in.  Freshly made cake just when you started your diet.  Those shoes in the window of that one store (don't even think about them, they cost way too much).  High on my list of forced avoidance has always been stupid B movies that take one and a half hours out of your life every time they suck you in (and they will suck you in).  Sometimes you aren't enraged about the experience, but they do call them B movies for a reason.  Maybe it means B-ware?

Come On Man!  You expect me to believe that?

In the back of my mind, I realized that I would eventually give in to an easy access link on my telephone, so I really had to decide if I was willing to give up "that" hour and a half, and regret losing the only sunny evening Colorado had seen during our annual monsoon rain stretch.  Honestly, I don't even recall pressing the link (can a link auto activate if you stare at it for too long), but I proceeded to watch, certain that I would eventually regret it, but conscious of how easy it would be to scrap this journey if the path was all that I had worried it would be.

Sharknado2 (The Second One), is not just a tornado of fish. This is a strategic shark war being launched upon the city of New York and aided by two really big tornado's.  No, not hurricanes so that the writer would have had to give it its own name.  This is a tornado of sharks, but only two of them this time (sharknado 2....you get it.....the second..never mind).

Maybe I really should go watch the first one to understand why the sharks are doing this, but that question is easier to answer than why I was watching this flick.  It's a B-movie (of sorts).  If the sharks aren't flying or the killer tomatoes were not attacking, these type of movies would not even be on screen.  However, this B movie has A+ effort placed into the suspension of reality measures that are needed for mass B-movie appeal.  Mass B-movie appeal is only possible when you are able to stick a hook in the mouth of movie skeptics (me) and keep them along for the ride.  Slapstick viewers don't require this.  They've suspended reality permanently as it relates to television and the silver screen, so these movies offer a magical joyride for them. The rest of us either catch jokes way too late, sometimes not at all or get them, but fail to find the humor.

Take, for example, the early scene from this movie in which Tara Reid is nearly falling from a flying airplane that was damaged while under attack from the first wave of these sharks.  The air marshal who is trying to rescue her, throws his gun to Reid (don't ask me her character's name) who proceeds to grab the gun and let off a few rounds in the direction of an oncoming shark.  The shark takes the bullets like a champ, and proceeds to bite off the hand of Reid as we watch (really fake looking) blood spray from her severed appendage.  If that wasn't enough early foolishness in this film, how about when the sharks make their way to the baseball game and everybody grabs a baseball bat to protect themselves from sharks.  One guy actually hits one of the sharks, and smacks a home run into the stadium scoreboard. Either a really small shark or a really great swing (B movie, B movie...move on bro').

Excluding the really fake looking blood squirt from Reid's lost hand, the blood and guts are gruesomely realistic in this movie, which appealed to the testosterone region of my brain. That was good enough to keep me watching early on, but that home run shark almost made me lose it.  My mission was rather simple in viewing this movie.  See what the buzz is all about without feeling like I wasted nearly 2 hours of life.  Viewing as a skeptic, I was glad that some of the anticipated predictability had not made its way into this flick.  I was certain that when Reid lost her hand to that shark within the opening 10 minutes of the show, that someone would wake up from a cliche dream sequence.  Nope! She had a stump the whole movie. Miraculously. I mean, in normal B-movie fashion, they find the shark who took that hand, and the gun, and they use the gun to kill another shark (didn't work so well the first time), recapturing the love (and the wedding ring) that was lost from days gone by.

But that's at the end of this movie.  In between, a whole lot of weirdness that I really don't often sit and watch kept me sitting and watching.  I never lost my compulsion to turn the movie off, but somehow I never really came close to doing it either.  This movie is cleverly woven together with a thread called "who else is in this damn movie".  From beginning to end, star after star, after has been actor, after television news mogul, seems to make an appearance in this flick, offering the subconscious legitimacy that this kind of extreme outlandishness demands. The variation of famous cameos becomes as much of the viewing experience as is the bloody shark attacks.

How did that shark chase them up the stairs?

Hip hop culture gets a few of its famous faces as Sandy (Salt of Salt and Pepa) Denton plays a role in which she did not get killed within the first ten minutes of the film. Or Vinny, the pizza shop owner played by legendary rapper Biz Markie.  After a long stint on the screen, Denton's character finally gets flattened by a shark while riding a bike to get away.  The shark that landed on her was more like a small whale, which made me wonder, how could she be riding a bike in the kind of wind that blows whale sized sharks around?  Al Roker and Matt Lauer came in at that very moment to clarify the storm (I mean Sharknado), so we pressed on.

Every time I found myself at my wits end, Al and Matt  or Kelly and Michael came in to certify the legitimacy of the sharknado. Eventually, I was no longer skeptical of sharknado's, I was skeptical of why New York only has one taxi driver (Judd Hirsch, Alex from "Taxi" the television series) and why is a city of bad asses letting Vivica Fox, Tara Reid and that one dude from Beverly Hills 90210, save the entire city by themselves?

No matter.  NY is saved in the end and Hawaii is probably the only American state left that could experience a sharknado  Can sharknado's reach my hometown, Colorado (I'd better Google that)?  Would the makers of this film find a way to get them here if they could?  If John Elway and Peyton Manning would back the effort, I am sure it could be done.  But how many films can they squeeze out of snow skiing sharks?

 I can see it now.  Sharkalanche 3 (It's All Downhill From Here)