Ah, Venice - the city of love, the birthplace of the renaissance. 1400 years of extraordinary history, of adventure, of mystery and romance. Beautiful architecture, grand canals and giant Great White Sharks. . . .

Wait. Back up a moment. Sharks?

Yup - sharks.

You see, it seems that some Evil Mafioso is searching for the lost treasure of Marco Polo. He knows it's in Venice, but doesn’t know the exact location - so he raises and releases his own personal army of great white sharks into the canals to protect treasure (putting aside how he came by or transported these sharks, of course). The Mafioso then sends divers to find the lost treasure, and then gets pissed that his divers keep getting eaten by sharks. One would think that you could skip the Great White Watchdogs and just send the divers unencumbered and in secrecy - but then I'm not the head of a mafia crime family, so what do I know.

Anyway, one of the Divers that got 'et was Stephen Baldwin's dad, and so Stephen leaves his plush gig as San Francisco’s greatest oceanographic professor and travels to Italy with his medieval expert girlfriend Vanessa Johansson. The mob muscles Stephen to work for them, shark attacks happen at such random intervals, there's some ninja action, a couple of gun fights, a foot chase (with the obligatory Apple Cart), and a chainsaw versus chair melee that's almost convincing in it's choreography. Then there's a gunfight, the Mafioso steps out for a bite, and we cue the "shocking" stinger that the sharks are still out there and hungry before we roll credits.

Okay, lets get one thing straight - Jaws is, hands down, the best movie ever committed to film. It was if it went straight from God's mouth to Spielberg's brain to my movie screen. I love the cheap knock offs too - Piranha, Great White, Deep Blue Sea, Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus - if it's got aquatic monsters eating tourists, it's like freakin' catnip to me. The fact that these movies are often so inept that they make Plan 9 From Outer Space look good is irrelevant. In fact flicks like Shark Attack III: Megalodon are not just inept, but so full on batshit insane and ludicrous that you can't help but love it!

Seeing the cover for Sharks in Venice, I instantly got that vibe, . And then finding out Sharks in Venice was directed by Danny Lerner - whose credits include Shark Attack II, Shark Zone and the utterly preposterous Raging Sharks - and that the studio was Nu Image Films, the modern day equivalent of Canon Pictures Group or Orion Films was just icing on the cake. Hell, just one look at the title of the movie and the script bloody well writes itself! Seriously, I was as giddy with anticipation as the girl who just got a pony for her birthday.

Boy was I wrong.

So all the prerequisites are there. We've got the Mayor Vaughn analog wanting to save the tourist industry by denying the existence of the maneater, we've got colorful, broadly painted caricatures, we've got a interesting aquatic setting with tons of faceless extras lining up to be a hot lunch - hell, Stephen Baldwin even gets a "This was no boating accident" line complete with dramatic close-up.

The problem? No damn sharks! Seriously, we get some shark action at the beginning of the flick, then the shark shows up again half an hour later, another brief appearance after another half hour before pretty much falling off the map until the climax. Of course the shark attacks consist of random stock footage from whatever documentary Discovery Channel was running for Shark Week at the time plus a close up of a diver thrashing about with red food coloring in the water and no shark within a hundred miles.

The rest of the time is taken up by mob bosses looking for treasure and mob bosses sending Ninja to kill Stephen and exciting foot chases and running up and down the same corridor every few minuets (no, seriously, they reuse the same damn set to represent several different locations, right down to the same extras in the same blocking). Now I'm used to shark footage getting flipped and reused for attacks (or being lifted right out of another Nu Image production - lets play Spot The Shark Attack III footage!), but when the same damn SWAT team member repels into the same warehouse moments apart - guys, you ain't fooling anyone.

Or what about the complete disregard for continuity. The Baldwin is attack by a shark, is forced to abandon his SCUBA gear and hide in Marco Polo's cave before making a desperate swim to the surface. We fade to black and pick up the Baldwin in the hospital with his girlfriend saying that he had been plucked out of the water by a gondolier and he's lost some blood but should be fine. Should be fine?!? Wait a second - not but 15 seconds ago, we saw him getting savagely attacked and his leg being ripped clean off. No, not just implied, but that was very clearly a dismembered leg floating disconnected from any human body. It wasn’t a trick of the light - the dude has no leg! And yet here he is, right as rain and leaving the hospital. What the hell.

And then there's my favorite, the divers are somehow able to communicate with the surface over the radio . . . WITH HUGE FREAKING rebreathers in their mouth. Isn't that - you know, against the laws of physics? But then I'm not a professional scuba diver, so what do I know.

The acting is pretty par for the course for these types of flicks. Vanessa Johansson is vapid and has nothing to do except look sexy (and we don't even get some skin! What kind of exploitation flick is this?), The Baldwin is marginally better as he sleepwalks through the movie, clearly showing off why he doesn’t get many acting gigs compared to the rest of the family, and the bad guys are all one dimensional mooks with Evil Moustaches.

At the end of the day, there's way too much above water human interaction. We're here to see a giant shark on a rampage, not see a gun fight between a cheap Hooper clone and the mob! And yet the last reel of the flick - the time that should be devoted to man versus beast - is spent in a rather run-of-the-mill gunfight between the Mob Boss and the cops while the Baldwin and Chief Evil Moustache wrestle about underwater. There's no gore, no sex or nudity, and it’s not the off the wall insane that made Shark Attack III so brilliant.

Go do yourself a favor and track down a copy of Great White instead.

THE DVD -
Meh, it looks okay. The CGI looks fake as hell, and I'm sure that the DVD isn’t doing it any favors. The blacks look good, the colors look fine - The Baldwin appears in all his pasty glory. The soundtrack is clear - you can hear every bombastic note!

THE EXTRAS -
A whole lot of nothing here! We get a handful of trailers for other Nu Image flicks and that's it.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
With all sorts of bad acting, a boring script, no gore or tits, and little to no feeding frenzy, unless you are hard up for some shark-on-human action, you should avoid Sharks in Venice.


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older