Advertisement

Movies & TV

You may choose two Sharknadoes, or the talking raccoon with the machine gun

I’ll be honest with you: my hopes for the Sharknado sequel were never all that high. Even when they gave it the self-aware subtitle Sharknado 2: The Second One even when the news broke that it would include a scene in which a shark somehow eats Rob Ford. Why? Because it’s a made-for-cable sequel to a made-for-cable movie in which a tornado scoops up a bunch of sharks and throws them at people. What do you do for an encore? Why do you need an encore at all?

But this is the reality in which we live: the first Sharknado got traction last summer, so now we get another one. And if you missed out on the communal Twitter experience when it aired earlier this week, you can catch both The Second One and the original Sharknado – which I’ll call Sharknado Classic, because honestly who the hell cares – tonight on a double-bill at the Carlton Cinema. (It’s just below the ad for The Room, which is more or less exactly where it belongs.)

Sharknado Classic screens at 7 pm, with The Second One following at 9 pm. The screening is licensed, so you can drink and hoot back at the screen, which I suppose is the whole point. But as I tried to tell you guys last year, it’s not always easy to watch a movie ironically – and a movie that is produced with the express purpose of being watched in that mode is almost certainly not going to be worth the effort.

Isn’t it better to go into a movie with the expectation – or at least the hope – that you’ll actually enjoy it? Yeah, hate-watching is a thing now – god knows I’ve been doing it with True Blood and Penny Dreadful – but I’d still rather legitimately enjoy myself than work to find something worth mocking in my entertainment.

And so I humbly suggest you see Guardians Of The Galaxy this weekend, which may not have a tornado filled with sharks but does have six or seven other previously unrealized cinematic miracles, thanks to Marvel Studios’ trust in director James Gunn. Gunn started out as a member of the Troma team – he wrote Tromeo & Juliet, speaking of films intended to be experienced ironically – and his time at that legendary schlock factory just sings through every demented moment of Guardians Of The Galaxy.

Gunn doesn’t need a gimmicky premise he just tells his story about a bunch of misfit heroes running around a comic-book universe with ridiculous energy and a lot of heart, and if there happens to be a talking raccoon riding a sentient tree warrior while firing a machine-gun, well, that’s just the cherry on top. No sharks required.

normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.