{"id":3299,"date":"2012-06-19T11:39:22","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T17:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=3299"},"modified":"2012-06-19T11:39:22","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T17:39:22","slug":"a-piranhaconda-summer-nyt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=3299","title":{"rendered":"A Piranhaconda Summer-NYT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a surprising amount of television this summer that threatens to be good for you: \u201cThe Newsroom\u201d on HBO. \u201cMichael Wood\u2019s Story of England\u201d on PBS. \u201cN.Y. Med\u201d on ABC. \u201cPolitical Animals\u201d on USA. You might as well still be in school.<\/p>\n

Syfy
\n\u201cPiranhaconda\u201d on Syfy.
\nBut not to worry \u2014 the careful viewer can still find disreputable entertainment in the summer listings. And I\u2019m not talking about the soul-killing reality version, like \u201cSnooki and JWoww\u201d or \u201cBristol Palin: Life\u2019s a Tripp,\u201d which will both be inflicted on America next week.<\/p>\n

No, this is trash with a sense of history. On Saturday night, the aficionado of B movies (we\u2019re grading on a curve) has a delicious choice: a reimagining of a camp classic from the 1980s, \u201cBlue Lagoon: The Awakening,\u201d on Lifetime, or Syfy\u2019s \u201cPiranhaconda,\u201d the latest gem from the schlockmeister Roger Corman\u2019s production shop.<\/p>\n

Of course, those with DVRs don\u2019t need to choose. You can have your \u201csweeping tale of survival, adventure and forbidden love\u201d and your \u201cPart fish! Part snake! All killer!\u201d too. If four hours of sandy castaway sex and giant man-eating fish-snakes sounds like too much of a good thing, though, here are some details that might help you decide.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlue Lagoon: The Awakening\u201d is based on the same century-old romantic novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole as the 1980 feature \u201cThe Blue Lagoon,\u201d but the connection pretty much ends there. \u201cThe Blue Lagoon\u201d put two young children on an island and gawked as they ran around naked and eventually figured out how to have sex. \u201cThe Awakening\u201d puts a pair of wised-up teenagers on an island, waits for them to have sex and then rescues them just in time for a really awkward prom. Three months in the jungle may be tough, but it\u2019s nothing compared with high school.<\/p>\n

You wouldn\u2019t expect anything different from a Lifetime movie. As you\u2019d also expect, Brenton Thwaites and Indiana Evans, playing the castaway couple, show less skin than Christopher Atkins and Brooke Shields\u2019s body double did on the big screen. (Mr. Atkins appears in the new film as a teacher; in keeping with Lifetime requirements, the cast is headlined by a female B-list star, Denise Richards, as the girl\u2019s mother.)<\/p>\n

Ms. Evans plays a nerdy, superorganized good girl who falls off a party boat during a school trip to Trinidad; Mr. Thwaites is the moody loner who jumps in to rescue her. Several large improbabilities later, they have washed up on a remote island, where they enact a teenage melodrama with the help of a monkey and a wildly out-of-place jungle cat.<\/p>\n

Where Mr. Atkins\u2019s Richard said to Ms. Shields\u2019s Emmeline, \u201cWhat would I ever do without my Em?,\u201d Mr. Thwaites\u2019s Dean says to Ms. Evans\u2019s Emma: \u201cWe had sex once! We\u2019re stuck on an island. We\u2019re not soul mates!\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides gallantry, and what Emmeline called her \u201cbuppies,\u201d the new film lacks the glowing cinematography of N\u00e9stor Almendros, who was nominated for an Oscar for \u201cThe Blue Lagoon.\u201d But under the direction of Mikael Salomon and Jake Newsome, \u201cThe Awakening\u201d offers occasional honest moments of humor and adolescent angst: Ms. Evans and Mr. Thwaites are in their early 20s and better actors than Ms. Shields and Mr. Atkins were in their teens.<\/p>\n

Self-satirizing humor is the whole point of \u201cPiranhaconda,\u201d an amiable, unapologetically crude gigglefest directed by the Corman veteran Jim Wynorski, whose long r\u00e9sum\u00e9 includes \u201cBig Bad Mama II\u201d and (under the name Salvadore Ross) \u201cThe Hills Have Thighs.\u201d Things couldn\u2019t be simpler: The beast of the title chows down on clueless vacationers, members of an island criminal gang, and the nubile cast and crew of an exploitation film called \u201cHead Chopper 3,\u201d while the victims say things like, \u201cWhy would anyone kidnap a low-budget-movie crew?\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s like an unholy union between a piranha and an anaconda!\u201d<\/p>\n

In a rough-cut screener the digitally animated piranhaconda looks like a giant green sock puppet, but it moves with surprising smoothness and outperforms most of the human cast. As it hoovers up bad actors, displaying a particularly keen nose for breast implants, it\u2019s hard not to root for the big lug. You particularly want it to get its fangs into Michael Madsen, sleepwalking through his role as a two-faced scientist, before its inevitable demise. No spoilers here.<\/p>\n

Which of these Saturday-night flicks provides more guilty pleasure? Teenage girls may prefer \u201cBlue Lagoon: The Awakening,\u201d but the vote here is for the clunky humor and honest tawdriness of \u201cPiranhaconda.\u201d It\u2019s what summer\u2019s all about.