Two Heads? That's Twice As Many Teeth!

I recently saw the movie "2-Headed Shark Attack", which absolutely should go down in history as one of the greatest pieces of film ever made. The acting is feeble, the dialogue is cliche and over-the-top, and the special effects include a giant shark puppet whose teeth visibly bend when the shark bites anyone.

Just in case you thought I was kidding.

Yes, I said "greatest", and here's my reason. If a movie with bad acting, bad writing, bad directing, and bad editing can still make me as happy as this movie did, then it is truly a work of cinematic genius.

Let's start with the title

It's short, straightforward, and basically gives you a clear idea of what the movie is about. How many other movie titles do that for you? "Star Wars" tells you that there's a war, but it doesn't say anything about a magical religion/force that allows you to move things with your mind, talk to the dead, and attract women to bear your children and then die before you turn into an evil overlord, "Lord of the Rings" could just as well be about a jeweler, and "Lost in Translation" could have been an epic ABC drama about castaways on a mysterious Island dubbed in a different language. But "2-Headed Shark Attack" sums up the entire movie in a nice, 3-word-1-number package that instantly tells you that if you're not interested in sharks, things with multiple heads, or attacks, then this isn't the movie for you.

By the way, if the title doesn't quite convey the seriousness of a 2-headed shark attack, the tagline at the bottom really drives that point home. "1 Body, 2 Heads, and 6,000 good teeth!". It's even got an exclamation point, just in case you weren't sure whether to read that in a monotone.

So let's move on to the characters

One of the first images in the movie is of 16 students who are throwing a beach ball around in the hull of a ship, and generally acting like stereotypical high schoolers. They've got some diva girls who are all friends with each other (and each others' enormous... tracts of land) and give mixed signals to the jocks, every single one of whom is exposing cartoon abs. There's a geek, who has darker skin, a fro, and some wispy facial hair, who also is the only person on the boat who has more than three brain cells, and one girl, Kate, who has nothing but disdain for the jocks and tries unsuccessfully to win the affection of the geek. Then we're introduced to Jaime Lannister, the professor of the class, and his wife, Carmen Electra, some other woman who can't act who seems to be the captain of the ship (although three different characters are referred to as "Captain" during the course of the movie, so I'm not entirely sure), and two men who don't speak English.

So we've got a 2-hour movie and 21 characters to develop. Not a chance, right?

Right. Within the first half hour of the movie, the ship breaks down, they find an island, people go back and forth between the island and the ship, and we establish that all of the ditzy girls are stupid and need professor Lannister to explain everything to them

Nameless Girl: "What is this?"

Token Smart Character: "I think it's a hole"

(Actual quote from the movie)

We also discover that all of the jocks are equally stupid, and are pretty much exactly the same. Like the girls, they also get no character development, as pretty much each one gets a single scene where they are disemboweled by the shark. There are two exceptions: Paul, the geeky one who is obviously going to save the day, and Cole, the only jock to get either any character development or a name. You can distinguish him, because unlike any of the other jocks, who don't wear any shirt, he wears a blue button-down shirt, although he seems to have forgotten about the button-down part of it.

I say character development loosely, sort of like when I tell my fiance that I eat fruit, when I'm really eating apple-flavored jolly ranchers. But it's what 2HSA has to offer, so I'll take it. He starts out as a complete asshole, then valiantly helps fix a boat, find gasoline, and help Kate repair the ship that everyone arrived on, and then has a change of heart again and tries to escape, probably at the expense of everyone else on the island. Of course, after this shocking betrayal, he gets eaten by a pair of shark heads.

I did enjoy the shark's methodology. Since it had two heads, it was able to double its efficiency at ending human lives, and even vary up its techniques a bit. When it only had one victim, it would wait for said person to convenient arrange him- or herself between both of its mouths, and then it would jerk its heads apart, ripping the measly human in two. When there were two victims, they would always conveniently swim close enough together the one head could devour one person, while the other head feasted on the other.

My favorite quotes:

Girl: "What is that?"

Professor: "It looks like an island!"

"Two heads? That's twice as many teeth!"

Girl 1: "OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!"

Kate: "Keep it together!"

Girl 2: "You's a bitch."

"That asshole gonna die."

"That's twice the electroreception!"

Of course, I forgot to bring up the most important part of the film.

This is the story, isn't it?