Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Jessa and I watched Sharknado.  The thought for watching this was to watch something that was “so bad it’s good” and have a good laugh.  In this sense, Sharknado…  …Disappoints?  I guess, to be fair, it was “so bad it was ok”, but it never hit the point of being excellently bad (like The Core or Red).  In our watch through, I noticed some things that differed between a “so bad it’s good” movie and “so bad it’s ok” movie for me, so I thought I would write about them.

First, a movie should have some concept of what it can do within its budget.  The Core seemed to have a fairly large budget, but Red or Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters seemed to have a smaller budget and compensated appropriately.  Sharknado, however, clearly had a smaller budget, but didn’t seem to take advantage of what they did have to cover what they didn’t.  For instance, the shark models were not very good, but they kept showing them to us instead of finding creative ways to not show them to us.

Another thing that can make a movie so bad it’s good is doubling down on tropes; especially if what trope you’re shooting for is initially unclear.  For instance, in The Core, both “The guy that hos nothing left to live for” and the sleazy “guy who is only interested in fame” both nobly sacrifice themselves to save the day.  In Sharkado, the only noble sacrifice was by George, who nobly sacrifices himself to save a golden retriever that is never mentioned again (and neither is George).  Conversely, when it’s really meaningful for someone to die by sacrificing themselves to end this disaster…  …They survive (even when we’re told that it’s a suicide mission).  This isn’t to say that a good movie has to be Hollywood-ized, it’s just that tropes can make a movie a lot of fun, and if you don’t have the budget or writing to make it good, fun is the next best thing.

Overall, I would say Sharknado is the least fun bad movie I’ve watched in the last few years, and, since I only watched it on Netflix, I guess  I’m happy about that.