Friday, December 28, 2018

SANTA JAWS (2018) ** ½


A young comic book artist named Cody (Reid Miller) receives a magic pen for Christmas.  He uses it to draw his latest creation, Santa Jaws, and naturally, the shark (who of course wears a Santa hat) comes to life.  Before long, the shark begins eating his friends and family one by one.  It’s then up to Cody to save Christmas.

Santa Jaws could’ve easily been another dumb SyFy Channel Original, and well… it is.  However, it’s a little bit funnier than you’d expect.  There are enough clever and a few downright inspired moments here to make it worth a look.  Some of the funniest scenes come after the revelation that the shark can only be harmed by Christmas-themed weapons as it gets stabbed with a candy cane in its glowing eyes (which are red, like Rudolph’s nose).  

Let’s be real here.  Santa Jaws is still a SyFy Channel movie.  As such, for every legitimately funny bit, there’s at least one or two cheesy groan-inducing moments.  You also have to put up with a couple of useless subplots that get in the way of fun.  The most egregious being the scenes of the doofus comic book store owner using the pen to make himself a hot girlfriend and cool car.

I can’t help but think that Santa Jaws would’ve been a better fake trailer than an actual movie.  Still, I couldn’t help but chuckle when Santa Jaws grew a sharpened candy cane horn to impale its victims.  I mean the elf kill alone guaranteed it an extra Half-Star.  As far as revenge-themed Christmastime shark movies go, it’s better than Jaws the Revenge. 

No comments:

Post a Comment