Sharknado 5: Global Warming Plot Summary:
Fin Shephard (Ian Ziering), his wife (Tara Reid), and friend Nova (Cassie Scerbo) must defend the world from yet another sharknado. This time the sharknados have a vortex in them that has the ability to transport the storms to different parts of the world in an instant.
Cameos: Chris Kattan, Clay Aiken, Brett Michaels, Olivia Newton-John, Tony Hawk, John Morrison (WWE), New York (I Love New York), Downtown Julie Brown, Charro (as The Queen of England), Fabio (as The Pope), Jai Rodriguez (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy), Margaret Cho, and Dolph Lungren.
You know, I used to enjoy the Sharknado films. I remember I absolutely loved Sharknado 2. It was a silly film that embraced its own absurdity. It delivered surprisingly clever pop culture parodies, and it delighted audiences with flying sharks being chopped by chainsaws.
Then everything started to go down hill during the third film. All the clever pop culture skewering has been replaced with forced dad jokes that fall flat on their face. The smartly placed celebrity cameos have gone from “Oh, wow!” to “Oh, that’s terrible.” The film’s self-awareness has evaporated and these films take themselves deadly serious. Corporate product placement, particularly for Xfinity, is insultingly blatant.
It’s become a chore to even watch these films, and yet they still keep getting made. And why? I think we’re all to blame at this point. We keep tuning in. We keep making them the #1 trending topic on social media — yes it even topped Game of Thrones for a bit this weekend.
We just all need to stop at this point.
These films have not gotten better with age, nor will they get any better. And why should they? People keep tuning in en masse, so why should there be any effort to improve them? All the team behind these films needs to do is come up with some ridiculous plot device (this time around it’s a mystical artifact found in Stone Henge) that doesn’t even need to make sense, find some random former stars, athletes, and Bravo personalities and then give Ian Ziering ridiculous weapons to kill sharks. That’s been the success of this franchise for the past few years, so why would they deviate from the plan?
The lone bright spot in this film is Cassie Scerbo, who tries her hardest to make the lousy material she’s given work. I commend her for giving this film her all, and not mailing it in, which she totally could have. Let’s hope she gets better work soon.
If you’re going to watch Sharknado 5: Global Swarming out of sheer morbid curiousity, don’t. You’re literally punishing yourself at the same time as validating SyFy to keep making these films.
Rating: 1 out of 10
