Shark in Venice (2008)

Shark in Venice (2008)

RELEASED October 6, 2008 RUNTIME 88 mins 

DIRECTOR Danny Lerner 

WRITERS Les Weldon (story), Danny Lerner 

STARS Stephen Baldwin, Vanessa Johansson, Hilda van der Meulen

LANGUAGE English GENRES Horror

Streaming on: TubiTV, Popcornflix, imdbTV, YouTube, Sling TV, Amazon Prime

The plot: Stephen Baldwin, a professor I guess, is like going all Tom Hanks-y Da Vinci Code style looking for a long-lost Medici treasure in Venice. Except: the mafia! sharks! Also, Scarlett Johansson's sister is the kidnapped girlfriend.

Random observations:

• If I had a time machine, the first thing I would do is go back in time to visit Thomas Edison and show him this movie. The rest will surely work itself out.
• Stephen Baldwin is like a creepy dude on OKCupid who is like "some of the ladies tell me I look like Alec Baldwin" and you puke a little inside and you're like "Not really tho."
• Oh hey! We're regurgitating the same shots over and over again. Nobody will notice!
• Oh hey! We're recycling extras and props and pretending like we've never seen them before!
• This is the second shark movie I've seen today that was filmed in Bulgaria. 

I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to let Stephen Baldwin carry a film, but they were wrong. Maybe they thought, "Hey, the film is called Shark in Venice, not Stephen Baldwin in Venice. It won't even matter!" But oh, it does.

However, Stephen Baldwin is actually not the most useless part of this film. In one scene we see Baldwin's leg get chomped off by a shark and in the next scene, it has miraculously reappeared with no explanation or acknowledgment. It's like the filmmakers are saying right from the start, "You know what? Fuck you."

In another scene, the props "department"(?) at least tried to make a plaque but misspelled "Medici". Eh, nobody will care! Look, movie, if you don't care, how can we? Answer me! But the movie never did and now I live alone on a farm in Wisconsin. 

0/1 Directing

0/1 Cinematography

0/1 Visual design

0/1 Editing

0/1 Plot 

0/1 Dialogue

0.2/1 Acting

0.1/1 Soundtrack/Score/Sound

0.4/1 Originality

0.1/1 Rewatchability

Total: 0.8/10 Binge Bones

Verdict: The absurdity starts at the onset of the movie when we are supposed to take Stephen Baldwin seriously as an academic. From there, people just slowly give up one-by-one until all that is left is a void where your soul used to be.