Posted: 04/23/2011

Dinoshark

(2010)

by Jef Burnham

Coming to Blu-ray and DVD on April 26, 2011 from Anchor Bay Entertainment.

As the cover of this release so proudly boasts, B-movie legend Roger Corman produced this Syfy original movie about dinosaur-shark hybrids cryogenically frozen in icebergs being loosed on the oceans by global warming. One of these creatures makes its way to the warm waters of a tourist hotspot on the coast of Mexico, and it’s up to tour boat captain, Eric Balfour (of Skyline and 24) to stop it. Corman himself plays a supporting role in the movie as Dr. Frank Reeves, an expert on dinosharks whose expertise leads to the beast’s ultimate destruction.

While this premise would seem to practically write itself, Dinoshark is an unbelievably boring film, in no small part due to its incredible over-writing. The screenplay is credited to two writers, while a third writer is credited with “additional dialogue.” And while you’re wading through the torturous first 35 minutes composed almost entirely of expositional dialogue, you can’t help but wonder, how much additional dialogue did this guy write?! Very few of the dinoshark’s kills are actually creative or interesting, and there isn’t an ounce of comedy, ironic or otherwise, in this tedious shipwreck of a picture. What’s more, the acting is horrible (lord knows Balfour tried), the score is bizarre and ineffective, Balfour mysteriously grows a beard and about three inches of hair in one scene, and we don’t even meet the antagonistic port captain until about halfway through the story.

Dinoshark is bad even by Syfy original movie standards. Your time would be better spent with Roger Corman’s Sharktopus, also available from Anchor Bay.

Special features include a feature-length audio commentary with visual-effects-artist-turned-dino-hybrid-series-director Kevin O’Neill and producers Roger and Julie Corman, as well as a trailer.

Jef Burnham is a writer and educator living in Chicago, Illinois. While waging war on mankind from a glass booth in the parking lot of a grocery store, Jef managed to earn a degree in Film & Video from Columbia College Chicago, and is now the Editor-in-Chief of FilmMonthly.com.

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