Okay, right off the bat, I have to tell you all that I could write and entire book about EVERYTHING wrong with this film; Bad science, bad writing, bad direction, bad editing, and yes, even some bad acting. Oddly not from Jason Statham. He did a fairly good job, despite being totally miscast as the lead in this. But, honestly, this film is NOT Jaws. It lacks the verisimilitude of such an endeavor. This is pure popcorn eating fun, summer film fare. Plus it does a better job of making a joint international venture than that less than stellar Matt Damon Great Wall film. It was a great idea, as a joint venture, but the story sucked. The Meg, on the other hand, despite being more of a parody of Jaws, like Jaws 3D, but it still manages to actually be fun.
All but one actor, the female engineer who designed the place; the actress was so utterly miscast. She was so weird in the part, and she also couldn’t act worth a shit…she just walked around all the time with a constant Zoolander’s “blue steel” look on her face. Man, she was awful. Okay…with that said, some of the acting by another actor was a tad bit waaaay over the top, and more like a caricature, the rest of the cast managed to do their jobs pretty well, including Stathum.
I could also write and entire chapter about the cliche shit that just made me roll my eyes several times while watching the film. But, I’ll leave that be for now.
I could also dedicate a chapter, or at least an afterword, to the lack of believable drama. In good storytelling, it’s essential to care about the characters in a film like this, where you may be losing some of your characters. But, the only one I actually cared about, was the little girl, who, btw, stole the damned movie. She was the single best part.
Another thing that annoyed me was the piss poor use of grab-ass humor. It was super cliche, and offered no real connections to the characters. Also, the way too obvious set ups for the big event moments were ALL completely predictable. In other words, NOTHING was surprising within this film.
And still, I enjoyed the damned movie. It was pure dumb as fuck fun summer flick, and I would MERRILY watch it again. Yeah, I know, I said merrily.
THE MEG gets 3 out of 5 Potatoes.
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