by Peter Callaghan
The clue is in the title: lacks depth. That, and the obvious similarities with Jaws, together with the abundance of lingering shots of tits and ass, makes The Shallows by Catalan director of style over substance films such as Non-Stop and Orphan a small fish in a big pond. Though with a running time of 86 minutes, impressive cinematography by Flavio Labiano, a brooding score by Marco Beltrami and despite a few melodramatic scenes of over-emoting (more the director’s and screenwriter’s fault than hers) an engaging performance by Blake Lively who appears in almost every frame, the latest man v monster tale is surprisingly satisfying in that you root for the protagonist and there are just enough twists and turns and jump out of your seat moments to hold your attention.
To the annoyance of her father (Brett Cullen) and jealousy of her younger sister (Sedona Legge), medical student Nancy Adams (Blake Lively) has decided to take a break from her nursing studies to visit a secret Mexican beach where her late mother holidayed in search of the “perfect tube” (a Texan term meaning wave, not to be confused with the Scottish phrase for idiot). After hitchhiking a lift from an attractive local (Óscar Jaenada) and flirting with a pair of hunky hombres (Angelo José Lozano Corzo and José Manuel Trujillo Salas), she suggestively strips to her skintight bikini and performs a series of surfing gymnastics to the tune of Neon Jungle’s “I don’t look for trouble, but trouble looks for me” with the carefree abandon of a Bodyform commercial.
The carcass of a humpback whale with a Janet Street-Porter sized bite out of its underbelly turns the water red and her face a whiter shade of pale. Then kapow! A great white shark sinks its pearly whites into her left thigh forcing her to scramble on top of a small rock formation which conveniently rises above the lapping waves of low tide. For the remaining hour, it’s Doctor Dolittle meets Tom and Jerry as she befriends a wounded seagull and attempts to outswim and outsmart the boo-hiss baddie by jumping from rock to whale to buoy to shore. A face-off ensues. One lives, one dies. Do the math…
The similarities with Jaws are inevitable and at times blatant. “Get out of the water” cries are copy and pasted and police chief Martin Brody‘s memorable one-liner “Smile you son of a bitch” is replaced with a more blunt “F**k you!” The minimal script is in marked contrast to Lively’s unnecessary, melodramatic and repetitive screaming, which grows more tiresome as the film progresses. And the ending is predictable. However, it’s not as bad as some critics would have you believe. There’s a beauty in the silent stillness which characterises so many of Flavio Labiano’s epic shots and a nerve-jangling quality to Marco Beltrami’s underplayed score which more than make up for the obvious shortcomings of Anthony Jaswinski‘s shallow script. Jaws it is not. But as a switch off the brain and reach for the popcorn type of film, it’s eminently enjoyable if instantly forgettable.
[imdb id=tt4052882]