Back when I was fun, I used to go to my friend Matt’s house, we’d watch a terrible movie together, and he and I would individually post our recap-reviews online. But then I had kids so I was no longer fun. Cut to TEN YEARS LATER, and Matt tells me he still hasn’t watched the rest of the Sharknado series because we watched the first one together and he was saving them for me. <sob>
Well! I’ll tell you what I did–I hired a goddamn babysitter and went to watch Sharknado 2 with him and Geoff and Dave.
We open on an image of a plane’s tail cutting through clouds… like a SHARK FIN cutting through WATER. Subtle as monkey pox. I love it.
Only a minute in and we have our first cameo–Kelly Osborne as the flight attendant. She is star struck. There in coach is Finn (Ian Zering), the absolute legend from the LA sharknado, doing a bang-up job of eyebrow acting. Could he sign her copy of his memoir? He passes it off to Tara Reid, who ghost wrote it. Tara Reid is so so skinny. Like her eyeliner looks blousy on her.
Finn looks out the window and hallucinates a shark flying through the air, but no, it must be a PTSD flashback, but NO, IT’S REALLY A SHARK. Cut to the cockpit, where the captain is the dude with the drinking problem from Airplane! Yes! The producers leaned in hard, and I’m loving it. Uh-oh, turbulence. The captain has seen worse.
A shark hits the wing! Finn freaks out and is subdued by an air marshall. Dozens of sharks swirl in the clouds! The CGI looks like it was done with oil pastels. The pilots get sucked out the windshield! Oh no, who will fly the plane! Finn, that’s who, and he’s comin in hot. Tara Reid is nearly sucked out of the plane, hanging on by a thread, but the air marshall hands her his gun. So smart! She shoots sharks, but one swims(?) up and bites off her shootin hand. Finn cachunks the plane onto the runway.
Finn’s sister and family are in the Big Apple. Mark McGrath is the dad. He and the son head off to a baseball game, while the girls do the girliest thing of all–visit the Statue of Liberty.
Finn details the incoming maelstrom to a crowd on a Manhattan street including Andy Dick in a Spirit Halloween-level cop costume. Only then, after this speech which seems like it could’ve been delayed a bit, he accompanies his wife to the emergency department and delivers her into the capable hands of surgeon Billy Ray Cyrus. This movie is a mad lib. Before she heads into the OR, Finn admonishes his wife not to lend a hand so literally next time. My god.
Finn’s sister and niece are on the ferry. The girl holds up a pamphlet, which is entirely blank on the back. The props department is staffed entirely with high school sophomores.
The mom’s sorority sisters (I may be making that up) tell her about the plane crash, and they look out to see a synchronized swim team of sharks in the Hudson River!
Finn has to go to the ballpark to rescue his brother-in-law and nephew so he hails a taxi with Judd Hirsch at the helm. Cut to Richard Kind waxing nostalgic about his time playing baseball at that stadium. Alas, he never hit a homer.
At that point, my friend Geoff said, “What’s this movie about?” and all the bones in my body dissolved.
Tara Reid changes into all black, except for her gauzy nub, and escapes from the hospital to go find Finn. She is so steady on her feet after general anesthesia–OK, queen!
At the ballpark, Vivica A. Fox kisses Finn, but he says “it’s complicated” between him and Tara Reid. I’ll say! Everything about this movie is complicated!
It is raining on one side of the stadium and a beach day on the other. Finn convinces his crew to get out of there. They pilfer bats from the souvenir shop, and VAF breaks hers over her knee! Badass but also strategically questionable!
Sharks rain down, and Richard Kind sends one into the stands–the home run he’d always dreamed about.
The whole stadium runs out, but somehow only a few dozen of them end up in the subway? That’s probably good though because THERE ARE CROCS IN THE FLOODED TRAIN LINES. They eat people, including Perez Hilton, but unfortunately not Jared from Subway, who is down there just sitting on a bench. Ugh, it’s like when Donald Trump shows up in Home Alone 2.
Finn fights a shark with his commemorative bat and almost dies but then STABS the shark with the bat and comes out of the scuffle with a baby shark (do do do doot do do) attached to his hip. “I need a chainsaw,” he says. “I need a smoke alarm and other hardware items to make a bomb and throw it at the storm.” (Paraphrased.)
The girl group makes it back to Manhattan, but the daughter has a cramp from all the running! No worries, a businessman offers to take them to his office, but then, wouldn’t you know it, he gets flattened by the rolling head of the Statue of Liberty, which just keeps rolling down the avenue like the boulder in Indiana Jones.
On the news, Al Roker corrects Matt Lauer–it’s a sharknado, not a sharkstorm. How many sex pests have cameos in this film?
Finn’s group ends up at a pizza shop owned by Biz Markie and then gets swords n’ whatnot at a medieval weapons store. Everyone knows that Manhattan is lousy with medieval weapons stores.
Tara Reid finds a little kid crying in the hospital and says, “Don’t worry, I’m gonna save you,” and then immediately hands her off to a stranger. Tara.
The streets are flooded, so Finn’s crew swing across from the roof of their cab to… the roof of another car? What’s the endgame here? Vivica kisses the teenage nephew in a way that makes me uncomfortable, and the cabbie gets eaten. Am I high? Because I feel like I’m high.
VAF and Finn take a slow awkward elevator ride to the top of a skyscraper where she pulls out a slingshot and he reveals a whole bunch of… bombs? They look store-bought, but when did that happen. They sling a bomb into the storm. It doesn’t work. They duct tape two together. No dice. Finn: “Even the sharks are tougher in New York.” Quadruple bomb!
Me: “Was Vivica A. Fox’s thong just showing?”
Dave: “You mean her whale tail?”
Finn is back with Mark McGrath and crew, and they’re stuck in a stairwell with sharks at the bottom. Mark looks at Finn and says, “Remember how we used to do?” At which point, my friends and I have no choice but to make jokes about mutual masturbation. But no, they run down, grab the fire ax, and I guess fight the sharks. I’m losing the plot.
Now there’s discussion of the freon tanks on the top of the Empire State Building. Tara Reid sees VAF and says to Finn, “That’s your ex, right? I can tell she still likes you.” And the mayor gives Finn a chainsaw. It’s like all the footage spilled on the floor and the editors picked it up and scotch-taped scenes together.
Finn stands on a truck, does a backbend worthy of an 80s hair band rock video and slices a flaming shark in half.
I guess they’re on the top of the Empire State Building now. Tara Reid shlunks a circular saw on her stump and uses her saw-hand to fuck up some sharks. VAF wires the freeon tanks, but the wire is not long enough–she has to hold it together, she’s gonna sacrifice herself! Zzzzzzz! She’s thrown into the air and gobbled by a shark.
But their plan–whatever it was–worked. Sharks are falling out of the sky, and New Yorkers on the street are using the farm tools everyone has for their farms to kill the sharks.
Tara Reid recognizes the shark that lands next to them–it’s the metaphorical croc to her Captain Hook! Finn reaches inside and pulls TR’s arm out of its mouth and shoots sharks with the gun. Then he pulls the engagement ring off the severed hand and proposes to Tara Reid. That is so romantic except aren’t they already married?
The end.
Me: “Can we do this again?”
Geoff: “Yeah! It’s gonna be hard to wait ten years.”