It’s Jason Statham versus an absolutely massive shark. If you’re expecting poetic dialogue, Oscar-worthy performances and a plot that makes sense at all times, please move along, you are mad. If you’re looking for "The Stath" repeatedly out-swimming a sea-beast the size of a large bungalow, overripe dialogue and lots of innocent people getting chomped to bits in ludicrous, hilarious ways, then come on in, the water’s loopy. Each summer there should be at least one movie that’s big, dumb and designed to be watched with an over-excited audience and this is 2018’s.
Based very loosely on a 1997 novel by Steve Alten (there were six more books, so brace for sequels), The Meg begins with an expedition to the Mariana Trench, the deepest place in the ocean. In fact, our band of underwater explorers, funded by a douchey billionaire (Rainn Wilson) are looking to dive under the Mariana Trench, which they believe to be a gateway to a deeper world of previously undiscovered fish and such. They are correct, but soon wish they weren’t as they unleash the megalodon, a colossal shark from the Pliocene era, which swiftly starts crunching humans like Twiglets. The remaining scientists do what anyone would in such a situation: they call Jason Statham. Statham is Jonas Taylor, whose accent suggests he’s spent time in Australia, the East End of London and the Bronx, once lost a whole submarine of men to the meg and means to make amends by saving this new crew.
Statham knows exactly what’s expected of him in this kind of project. He scowls and smoulders, delivers every dreadful line with an enormous comic wink and every now and again takes his shirt off to give his abs an airing. He is never less than a hoot. He’s the man you get when your budget won’t stretch to The Rock, but you want the same level of charisma. Not all his costars are quite so aware of what they’ve signed up for. Wilson knows that he’s there to be awful and then get eaten horribly. Cliff Curtis, as the captain of the ship, knows it’s his job to shout authoritatively and nothing else. Li Bingbing is completely OK as a scientist who flirts relentlessly with Jonas, although their chemistry has all the fizz of an Alka Seltzer in oil, but Shuya Sophia Cai as her daughter, Meiying, is comedy gold. Ruby Rose is lumbered with a scientific genius role that primarily calls for scowling.
There are plenty of big set pieces, which either rip off or pay homage to everything from Jaws to Piranha 3D to Deep Blue Sea, depending on your view. They’re huge amounts of fun, though you do wonder if they might be even more fun with a slightly better or more schlocky director. Jon Turtletaub (National Treasure; The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) does a perfectly decent job with a silly script (which spreads the blame between Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber), but there’s more to wring out. Some of the deaths and near misses are over too quickly, robbed of an extra gasp, scream or laugh. There’s a comic timing to action that he doesn’t really have.
That’s asking a bad movie to be a better bad movie, though. For the most part, The Meg gives its audience exactly what it expects and what it wants: B-movie thrills on an A-movie scale. You’ll see many better movies this year – you might even see several better ones this week – but you’re unlikely to see many that are more purely entertaining. Go to the biggest available cinema, on the busiest possible night, maybe after a few drinks, and you’ll have the time of your life.
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