The only redeemable things in this movie are the picturesque location of its filming and the two-dime jokes exchanged between the characters. Now with that aside we can move onto the main aspects of this doomed production. The premise to the story warms us up to the absurd context that evolves quickly, and, then even more quickly devolves after the establishment of the conflict to a climax that makes you cringe, not in suspense but at the sheer farce of a situation involving guns, puck up trucks, booby traps, a helicopter, a cow hanging from the helicopter, and, of course, a giant crocodile that seems to be popping up (conveniently enough) in all the right places at all the right times. Now, I don't know if the real intention behind the film is to be scary or funny or scientific, or all, but one thing I do know for sure, is that it fails at every one those levels.
The summary to the movie is well-known. Going a little further into its timeline, we get to the scene where Kelly Scott, a museum palaeontologist, is told by her boss, Kevin, that 'some guy' gets killed up in Maine by something, probably a bear, and that they'd found a fragment of a tooth, probably belonging to the animal responsible for the guy's death, and that he wants her to go up there and examine it as to determine the kind of the animal. Oddly enough, he didn't mention that the sheriff was present when that particular killing took place, and being a mountain guy, he'd probably be familiar with the fact that bears don't attack from underwater in the middle of a deep lake. To me that was the first clue to the fact that this movie was not to be taken at face value. Even though the overall story was a crippled version of Jaws, I still found some enjoyable moments in the movie, especially those long shots of the magnificent locations. My advice? Don't count on learning anything about real life croc behaviour or the authority procedure in such a case. I also found amusement, yet again, at the oh so familiar American way of being too philosophical about everything- to kill the croc or not to kill it? Yeah, that was going for a while...
The summary to the movie is well-known. Going a little further into its timeline, we get to the scene where Kelly Scott, a museum palaeontologist, is told by her boss, Kevin, that 'some guy' gets killed up in Maine by something, probably a bear, and that they'd found a fragment of a tooth, probably belonging to the animal responsible for the guy's death, and that he wants her to go up there and examine it as to determine the kind of the animal. Oddly enough, he didn't mention that the sheriff was present when that particular killing took place, and being a mountain guy, he'd probably be familiar with the fact that bears don't attack from underwater in the middle of a deep lake. To me that was the first clue to the fact that this movie was not to be taken at face value. Even though the overall story was a crippled version of Jaws, I still found some enjoyable moments in the movie, especially those long shots of the magnificent locations. My advice? Don't count on learning anything about real life croc behaviour or the authority procedure in such a case. I also found amusement, yet again, at the oh so familiar American way of being too philosophical about everything- to kill the croc or not to kill it? Yeah, that was going for a while...