Review of Oceanic FU - The Meg

Welcome to a review of one of the biggest missed opportunities I have ever seen in a movie. It stands with Hancock, Alpha Protocol, Fantasy Island, Bright etc. as among the most potential-filled movies that just completely fell over when it tried to go forward.

So…a movie with Jason Statham, chasing a giant prehistoric shark with a group of scientists, with a general tone of self-parody, directed by the guy who brought us the enormously entertaining/ludicrous National Treasure movies? How does that not work?!

Simple. Forget the silly tone and opt for a plain, generic, PG-13/M-rated blockbuster with not a lot of ideas about what to do with itself. I did not laugh once during this movie, even at the jokes spewed forth with mighty effort, and I did not feel tension once during this movie. I only put my fingers in my ears when the jump scares came.

More of this, less of archetypes talking to other archetypes, please.

This movie neutered itself by going for a PG-13/M rating, as by doing that, you’ve eliminated a lot of the possibilities for gory ridiculousness that make movies like Sharknado or Deep Blue Sea so ludicrously entertaining. Instead, it has to cut away from the action and the violence, and sometimes the matter of deaths just makes no sense whatsoever because the producers wanted to hide the blood.

Why is there always a dog in danger from something? Can't it be a cat, or an axolotl, or even a Komodo Dragon for once?

The movie is filled with cliché after cliché, which is just tiring at this point. Why do all these characters have to know each other through convoluted circumstances, or these characters have to chastely flirt to one another rather than doing anything after their crew were eaten by giant sharks? We don’t care. We just want to see Jason Statham go after the Meg in question, but when he does, the movie plays it with Michael Bay seriousness rather than acknowledging the fact that Statham is literally stabbing a prehistoric shark with a harpoon after failing to kill it with missiles. As such, it’s boring.

Now about Statham, he’s easily the best part of this movie, bringing his usual charm and action cool, although I would have loved this movie if he just played his character from Spy. If you haven’t seen Spy, watch it and realise I’m right.

Li Bingbing, Cliff Curtis and Winston Chao all are working quite hard to create compelling characters, while Rainn Wilson’s character just feels like a huge missed opportunity to create a goofy comic-relief character with actual audience relatability. Page Kennedy’s character is just there to say some sardonic words with vain stabs at audience laughter, and Robert Taylor (Agent Jones from The Matrix) just feels so unnecessary in the film as the human antagonist. Nothing would be lost if he wasn’t in it.

To sum up, I feel The Meg is a huge missed opportunity to create a big-budget B-movie. If you were to compare to, say, Pacific Rim or Guardians of the Galaxy, films which knew how to be creative in style but with the heart and charm of a B-movie as well, The Meg has plenty of precedent to be great. As such, it is at best…fine, if you are looking for something cheap to watch with nothing of real substance to pass your time in coronavirus.

Anyway, what films flew across the ocean like a dolphin, or just farted along like Dan Radcliffe in Swiss Army Man? Leave your answers in the comments.