9 Shark Movies To Prepare Audiences For The Meg

A lot of the time, this film gets a pass for being a self-aware, goofy parody of the genre.

Not today.

Syfy's first installment in the now six-film-long franchise(!?!) wants to be a knowingly goofy send-up. But it forgets that great parodies, ala Airplane! or Young Frankenstein, are actually intelligent about the subject they're spoofing. This film instead opts for cramming in as many references and cheap gags as it possibly can, resulting in a film that is much more Disaster Movie than it is The Naked Gun.

It's a film that feels engineered for the purpose of generating midnight screenings and Mystery Science Theater-esque riffs for years to come, but also misses the point of those films. Infamously bad movies such as Birdemic or The Room aren't funny because the producers were trying to make midnight films, they're funny because they weren't.

So in the end, Sharknado is impotent in pretty much every way. Having said all of that, The Meg clearly looks to be borrowing from this franchise's irreverent marketing, catch-phrases, and taglines.

The trailer puts heavy emphasis on the 'chomp on this' tag and moments like Jason Statham dropping one-liners amidst shark-fueled madness. Here's hoping The Meg toes the line between self-aware parody and actual narrative film a bit better than this does.