I generally try to stay well-informed about the latest movies coming in from Hollywood. But as I read about a new movie in the works, currently called “Untitled 3D Shark Movie,” I wondered if blissful ignorance might be the way to go. Directed by David Ellis, the same joker who brought you the charmingly literal “Snakes on a Plane,” this movie is pretty self-explanatory. Predator, blood, shrilly doomed victims. Ellis is pushing to keep that working title when the bloody spectacle floods theaters in September of this year.
I was reminded of a line in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” when his character Alvy Singer notes that in Beverly Hills, “they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.”
That was even before The Situation and his protein shakes or that show about huge families of little people. The truth is, quite a bit has changed since Alvy Singer equated television to Mount Trashmore, in that quite a bit of it has gotten worse, and quite a lot of it has become extraordinary.
If some television is indeed our trash can material (in the case of “Toddlers in Tiaras,” maybe even our sewage system), movies are our recycling bins. And while not all sequels lack merit (Toy Story 3, much?), many of them are excuses for creative laziness.
Sure, the assortment of plastic surgery and dating shows might make television an easy target for mockery, but change the channel and you get the beautiful cinematography of shows like Mad Men and the comic genius of shows like 30 Rock. Check the movie times, and you’ve got “Little Fockers” and other burpy, whiny studio babies. Some movies pretend to be new and inventive, and some are as audacious as “Untitled 3D Shark Movie” in their complete security with being mundane and repetitive. So I’d argue with my favorite neurotic and suggest that our TVs are proving when it comes to what we watch, maybe screen size doesn’t matter.
And now, it’s even easier to repackage the same material. 3D is a movie card trick. When limbs and bombs seem to poke and explode 2 inches from your eyelashes, real plot lines or characters are rendered unnecessary. And while 3D movies done right – see “UP!”, for serious – can make you forget about the Harry Potter eye wear perched on your nose, most make me expect to see life size Tweedle Dees and Tweedle Dums on the way out of the theater. Disney World’s the only place you should be able to get away with such cheap “oops, don’t poke the audience’s eye out” 3D pranks.
While our “Untitled 3D Shark Movie” began as a studio inside joke, the director maintains that he wants to hang on to the title, which tells you everything you need to know about this flick and the current Hollywood mentality.
That’s not to say it wasn’t a great year for those, say, 10 percent of movies that aren’t redundant sequels, prequels or remakes. Movies like “The Social Network” and “Inception” (Not my personal favorite. I actually fell asleep in this one. Yes, I know, how “meta”) meant that some of the year’s most precious critic darlings also brought in the big bucks for the first time since probably “Titanic.”
Plus, one could hardly call this year’s Oscar affair snobby. The American people and the Hollywood elite seem to be in agreement about this year’s best films. Perhaps this bodes well for the future of both moviegoers and innovative scriptwriters living on ramen in the greater Los Angeles area.
But in the meantime, with all respect to my man Woody, I’m cool with just staying home and Hulu-ing the latest “Parks and Rec.”
Amanda Scherker is a Communication sophomore. She can be reached at [email protected].
