The Meg

Director: Jon Turtletaub

Screenwriters: Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber, and Erich Hoeber

Cast: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Cliff Curtis, and Masi Oka

When a movie nails expectations, even expectations that are modest and purposefully withdrawn, does that mean it’s good? This is the question we must ask ourselves when describing The Meg, the latest crazy summer shark movie.

The Meg follows a Naval marine biologist played by Jason Statham (just go with it) named Jonas Taylor. After a mishap during a top secret exploratory mission in the Mariana Trench, Taylor is disgraced having abandoned half his crew and aborting his mission due to his sighting of a 70-foot long shark-like creature that no one else saw. Believing he was crazy or that the decompression sickness had made him delusional, Taylor is dishonorably discharged from his Naval position and from the project.

Five years later a submersible and crew are lost in the same area of the Trench where Taylor believed he saw the massive sea monster. The Naval research group privately funded by billionaire, Jack Morris (Rainn Wilson) has yielded some results, discovering a completely new ecosystem below the originally perceived base of the Mariana Trench. This ecosystem is protected by a cloud of gasses allowing the temperature below the cloud to support abundant sea life. Believed to be the only person on earth with the experience and training at such a depth, Taylor is hesitantly recruited back to assist with the search and rescue for the lost submersible. Reluctantly, Taylor agrees in the hopes to regain his honor and prove that the creature exists. Guess what? It does.

The Meg proceeds like every monster movie, only this one is in the ocean. The Meg (short for Megalodon) escapes the depths via a plume of warmer temperature water created by the Naval submersibles penetrating the gas cloud. Now, free to roam the Pacific, Taylor and his crew must attempt to capture the beast before it can cause catastrophic consequences to mankind. The film is actually a lot of fun. Taylor’s team includes all the archetypes we love to see mix it up: the fallen hero, the corporate businessman, the misinformed expert, and the strong-headed scientist, and a Terrier named Pippin.

The Meg is mostly brain candy. It’s like a Michael Bay movie before he totally lost his mind. The performances are weak, the premise is silly, and the story is predictable, but that’s what I thought it would be, and that’s kind of what I wanted it to be. So is it good. The short answer is, yes. The silly premise is not unlike most films in the genre, which is serviceable that some event allows this merging of worlds. It’s nearly 2 hours, but it’s a pretty tight 113 minutes. Most importantly, nearly all of the $130 million dollar budget appears to have been used on the shark, and it works. There are a nice pile of quality visuals presented here. The film has a clear intention of devouring Chinese box offices as well setting an outstanding and highly anticipated scene where the Meg terrorizes a busy beach of swimmers in China instead of San Diego as it happens in the book (yes this is an adaptation of a novel!).

My overall point, is I’m a sucker for shark movies, and I like the popcorn element of this one more than many in recent years. I also like Jason Statham in this film, who is underrated in his ability to mix humor and action. He’s done this marvelously in films like Snatch and Spy, but here he does it in a movie that does not begin with the letter “S.” Hopefully this review has successfully communicated the esoteric appeal of this film, but if you fit the niche, dive in! B+

The Meg is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 1 hour and 53 minutes.