ReelBob: ‘The Meg’ ★★½

By Bob Bloom

“The Meg” is like its title creature, oversized and perpetually in motion.

The movie is basically “Jaws,” injected with a few hundred doses of steroids and testosterone.

The movie offers a few surprises, which is basically rare for a feature of this caliber.

Plus, it also allows action star Jason Statham to again show his warm, fuzzy and funny side as he did in “Spy” and most recently, “The Fate of the Furious.”

“The Meg” centers on a megalodon, a prehistoric shark that was believed extinct until a team of scientist explore an uncharted trench in the Pacific Ocean.

Their crafts and lights bring them to the attention of the creature, which begins to attack them.

They are rescued by Statham’s Jonas Taylor, an expert deep-sea rescue diver.
The meg, however, soon breaches the barrier that kept it from the known ocean — and we are off to the races.

The meg is a giant chomping machine, with various people and fish serving as its all-you-can-eat buffet items.

It is up to Taylor and the surviving scientists involved in the international undersea observation program to put it down.

The film is a joint U.S.-Chinese venture, indicated by Statham’s costars, who include Li Bingbing as the daughter of oceanographer Winston Chao, who heads the observation program.

“The Meg’s” charm is that it does not take itself too seriously. A lot of quips and quirky characters keep the tension from going overboard.

The film is restrained; it’s not as gory as you’d expect. In a way, it’s a throwback to the type of creature features produced during the 1950s, when giant bugs and thawed-out dinosaurs threatened mankind almost every Saturday afternoon.

The movie is more a CGI showcase, with the credit for most of the thrills going to the computer programmers, but still, it’s cheesy entertainment.

And, sure, the cast doesn’t need to strain themselves. But they are not the main attraction.

The movie belongs to the meg, who gobbles up all the scenery it can, flailing about as it bites down on various oceanic vehicles that get in its way.

The fun is watching Statham go eye-to-eye with the beastie, without even breaking a sweat.

Unlike “Jaws,” “The Meg” won’t make you be weary of going into the water, which, truth to be told, is one of the movie’s drawbacks.

The big brute is just not that scary — devoid of personality and purpose.

It just swims around and eats, picking off some cast members along the way.

You’re not expecting “Moby Dick” here, merely a little under two hours of excitement and preposterous action and thrills.

I am a member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My reviews appear at ReelBob (reelbob.com) and Rottentomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com). I also review Blu-rays and DVDs. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com or on Twitter @ReelBobBloom. Links to my reviews can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

THE MEG
2½ stars out of 4
(PG-13), action and danger, bloody images, violence, language