SHARKNADO

Los Angeles is shaken by rains and storms that are bringing the city to its knees, to this is added a series of extremely violent tornadoes. But these are not common tornadoes, because inside them there are hundreds of sharks, of all species, that have been taken directly from the ocean while they were migrating en masse, alarmed by the climatic conditions. The surfer Fin decides to move from the coast, where he works as a bartender, to the hills of Los Angeles to meet his children and ex-wife, and on the journey he is accompanied by his colleague Nova and his friends Baz and George. But surviving the tornadoes and the sharks that now infest the flooded streets of the city will be hard. Take off your hat, if you have one on your head, and let us all together salute with pride "Sharknado", the biggest commercial success of The Asylum, and one of their absolutely absurd best films. That the subject writers and screenwriters of The Asylum have a very precise modus operandi is now clear for a long time, a method that can develop in two ways: create modest copies of the upcoming American blockbusters or give birth ex novo to original but definitely unusual products. "Sharknado" belongs to this second category and now any doubt about the creative process of the "workers" Asylum is cleared: take a bussolotto, put inside slips with a theme-an object-a situation, spin the bussolotto well, draw at random and create the story. There is no other explanation for the way a subject like that of "Sharknado" could come out, signed, as the screenplay, by Thunder Levin ("Atlantic Rim", "AE: Apocalypse Earth"). A subject that is simply brilliant, let's say it clearly! That is, sharks, for some strange reason, are daily bread for these low-budget productions for cable TV and they are serving them in every sauce: giant and prehistoric (Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus), mechanical (Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark), two-headed (2-Headed Shark Attack), able to swim in the sand (Sand Sharks), ghosts (Ghost Shark) and hybridized with any other animal (Sharktopus, for example). But a school of sharks hurled everywhere by a tornado that has swept them, well... this was definitely missing. "Sharknado" has all the limits of The Asylum productions and perhaps even more, given that the idiocy of some situations and logical errors reach very high levels, with sharks appearing in really improbable places, tornadoes acting against every physical law and the water level mysteriously always different, according to the needs of the scene. The special effects, then, are something deeply ugly, with sharks mostly made in computer graphics but with a rendering that makes them look like an effects preview still not finished. Yet, despite these objective data and a thousand other macroscopic problems related to the construction of the characters and the flat direction (by Anthony C. Ferrante, the one of "Boo – Morire di paura"), "Sharknado" is genuine fun, a film so shamelessly and consciously absurd that it leaves a smile of thirty-two teeth during the entire film viewing. In a cast that includes also known names like Tara Reid ("American Pie"), Ian Ziering (the Steve of "Beverly Hills 90210") and Jon Heard ("Fuori orario", "Mamma ho perso l'aereo"), Cassie Scerbo ("Ragazze nel pallone") stands out especially in the role of the tough barista, more than anything for her undeniable physical qualities. There are also splashes of splatter here and there and ultra-cult scenes like Ziering who voluntarily enters the mouth of a great white shark armed with a chainsaw, to then come out of the belly gutting the fish from the inside. In short, a lot of stuff. If you are looking for a movie for a night between friends dedicated to the most vulgar "cazzeggio", "Sharknado" is the definitive answer. And given the success, the sequel is on the way: "Sharkando 2: The Second One"! Audience with good taste abstain. Add half a pumpkin. "Sharknado" is distributed in Italy by Minerva Pictures directly on DVD (no high definition Blu-ray). A DVD above average of the films arrived in Italy and branded The Asylum, as it is equipped with the dual audio track (English and Italian) and extra contents that include the bloopers on the set. Good also at video level, with clean and well-defined image. No subtitles.