Wildlife photographer Terry (lovely Ahna Capri) and her brother Art (underwhelming drip Tom Simcox) go to Venezuela for a photo shoot. They hire the rugged Jim Pendrake (hunky Peter Brown) to guide them through the jungle. However, the trio run afoul of evil and lethal local hunter Caribe (legendary B-flick tough guy William Smith in peak nasty form). Sound good? Well, it sure ain't. William Gibson's flat (non)direction and Richard Finder's dull, talky, and uneventful script fail to deliver much in the way of either action or excitement, the draggy pace plods along at a painfully sluggish clip, and there's a numbing abundance of boring filler and (admittedly pretty) travelogue footage of the gorgeously verdant jungle. Moreover, the mild PG rating ensures that we don't get any graphic nudity or harsh violence to alleviate the severe tedium (for example, Capri gets raped by Smith, but it happens off screen). Richard LaSalle's score alternates between the reasonably funky and the hideously slushy. The titular flesh-eating fish only pop up briefly towards the end. Jim Stein's horrendously sappy folk ballad "Love All Things That Love the Sun" sure doesn't help matters any. That said, the always dependable Smith adds some sorely needed energy to this otherwise dreary bilge, there's a thrilling motorcycle race between competitive alpha males Smith and Brown, and Smith does finally embark on the inevitable crazed rampage in the fairly lively last ten minutes, but overall this insipid wash-out proves to be a real crummy chore to endure. Skip it.
Review of Piranha
