I first heard about 'Big Shark' about 10 years ago when Tommy Weisau gave an interview while touring his (then) newest feature 'Best f(r)iends' in which he announced he was returning to film making with long time buddy under duress Gregg Sestero. With his next feature, inspired by 'Jaws', having the tentative title 'BIG SHARK MOVIE!'…A few years passed, and in 2019, a trailer for it landed and…it looked bizarre, strange and very *of* 'The Room' in nature. And sure enough, It seemed to depict Tommy, Gregg and a new guy getting into fights with their partners and fighting a GIANT shark that had seemingly invaded New Orleans. I was fairly excited…
Aaaand then 7-8 years passed, Covid happened, the film seemingly dissapeared, briefly reappearing in 2023/24 at a handful of US cinemas for premier screenings…Again, I didnt hear much about it…and then last night while flicking around on Tubi, I found out that it was seemingly just…dumped on there…Now titled simply 'Big Shark'. Without hesitation I cleared my diary, grabbed the popcorn and sat back to see what Tommy Weisaeu could do outside of modern takes on 'Tragedy'…and the answer is…'The hell if I know?!'.
The plot follows three firefighters (that element is set up VERY heavily…as if them being firefighters is going to be relevent to the story…it isnt…not really. Other than for one specific scene where the fire captain call the gang to warn them about a 'big shark' about 45 minutes in…) We're introduced to Patrick, Georgie and Tim. Three all american guys, saving lives, drinking beers and living life to the fullest with their foxy FOXY ladies…
But just beneath the surface, theres tension. Patrick and Tim are both struggling in their relationships, arguing with their partners…kind of…the film makes out that they're simultaineously in very secure happy relationships, but then, as is the case in 'The Room', an arguement between the couples will just…happen. out of nowhere…go on for about 2 minutes getting increasingly heated…and then abruptly stop for no reason either…Its weird…
Anyway! lifes a party for the boys, and the day after the night before, Patrick decides to take his partner Sophia out on the lake to go fishing. While out there, the couple have a heart to heart, argue, Patrick sees a 35 foot shark in the Mississippi river (the film doesnt show the shark at this point), his partner doesnt believe him, they argue, the arguement abruptly stops, and they go home with one fish thats big enough for 2-3 with the aim of feeding 6.
From there? The film just gets more and more disjointed and strange honestly…As Patrick, Tim and Georgie enter a cycle of talking various shades of bollocks about anything and everything that happens to be going on. theres idle footage of the group shopping, dancing in the street, drinking, driving around, sleeping, showering…But every so often the film will cut away to a MASSIVE shark destroying bridges, sliding down side streets eating people, or lunging about…And noone reacts to any of this, the news occasionally brings it up, but only in the same way they might bring up that days 'powerball' numbers…
Add to this, that through this, roughly 45-50 minute window, non of the gang acknowledge the shark problem…other than Patrick…who sheepishly will just occasioanlly drop a 'I saw a shark in the river y'know…' into the random conversations every 15 minutes or so…sometimes it gets acknowledged and dismissed a bit…sometimes it just gets completely ignored.
Anyway, around the hour mark, the sharks flooded so many parts of New Orleans, destroyed so many bridges and killed so many people, that the captain of the fire department 'Captain Joe' calls the gang to let them know a big shark is on the loose, and that the gang need to try and either track it down and get rid of it, or stay indoors.
The gang thank the captain for flagging it up…and then the remaining 35-45 minutes of the film is the gang just…doing more random bumbling about getting into WEIRD situations like pig chasing, and buying pulled pork sandwhiches. intercut every so often with them encountering the Big shark, not really being that scared of it…and occasionally getting the sentience to go 'OH MY GOD! BIG SHARK!' for about 20 seconds, until the scene cuts to the lads going for a run. Or having another beer.
Concluding with a 10 minute finale where Patrick and Tim decide to get serious on taking the shark out…or as serious as this film can get.
Somehow this is even more incoherent than 'The Room' at times, Big Shark kind of transends explanation, it has to be experienced almost to get a read on exactly what its putting out there.
The big elephant in the room is Gregg Sesteros involvement. According to Gregg, Tommy basically tricked him into performing in the initial 2019 trailer for this film by promising a leading role as 'Georgie'. Gregg accepted, and with it, also agreed to help co-write the movie. But then in 2020 Covid hit, Tommy told Gregg the production was 'paused' and then just…didnt get back to him. When he finally did come back a year or two later, Gregg had already firmed up his filming diary and couldnt take part in the film anymore…and sometime between then and the films release Gregg was written out of the movie and 90% of the co-writing he'd done for the film had been deleted…but not smoothed out.
I feel like that explains a lot of this movie, Because it feels pretty much from the off like there are a lot of scenes that happen, where there were scenes in between the scenes that made it into the movie that were just…removed in pre-production…but those scenes had essential context, that wernt carried over and back into the movie. For example, the opening scene is of the guys saving a family from a burning building. which then crossfades to reveal the footage we were seeing was in a movie theater where…SOMEONE (its not explained who) has decided to give the firemen all medals…According to Gregg Sestero, the reason its in a movie theater, who is giving them an award, and why was all in an additional scene that was cut and not elaborated on.
The bulk of the film is the guys goofing around, improvising in locations and presumably doing a lot of shooting at locations in exchange for promotion of goods and services. with NO mention of the shark for HUGE chunks of the runtime…and then it'll randomly just cut to the shark destroying things…NOONE other than Patrick really mentions the shark for the bulk of the film, noone is ever really panicked, or bothered…in fact, the shark can slide into the scene and kill 2-3 people, and everyone else will just kind of…barely acknowledge its there…as if a small bird had landed or something.
Obviously Gregg had to be recast because of the scheduling commitments, and thats a real shame as I think he'd have been great here. According to Gregg, the actor hired to play his part, 'Georgie' had a bit of a fraught relationship with Wisaeu during filming, and as such. Tommy took the opportunity to get rid of him as soon as possible…But that in turn meant EVEN MORE of the script had to be deleted with no detail carried over…meaning once Georgie exits the film, everything after that point becomes EVEN MORE incoherent, and the events leading up to his exist become EVEN MORE bizarre, disjointed and unrealistic.
I really cannot stress enough how, if it wasnt for a vague sense of sincerity in this production that makes me believe Wisaeu was really trying to make a kind of horror, action drama film as best as he could. I'd be convinced this was an Adult Swim funded production. And I think the thing that endears me to this film as much as it did endear me is the fact that, up until the closing 10 minutes or so. The film does seem genuine in its intentions, it doesnt feel like Tommy is making a self aware goofy comedy film. I dont know what he IS trying to make…but whatever it is, It feels like he actually believes in it.
So, the script itself? disjointed, feels almost dream like in places, has characters who feel like the actors are playing themselves (likely because they are) has terrible lumpy pacing, the three act structure is a monolith with a 10 minute epilogue tacked onto the end. the dialogue ranges from genuinely awful, to instantly quotable in a way that only Tommy Wiseaus movies really can be. a HUGE chunk of Patricks lines are just him doing improvised singing about cowboys and his girlfriend. The front half of the film uses the words 'Delusional Minds' about 200 times with a few variations as well. I dont know if Tommy just liked the idea of his character constantly being told he has a 'Delusional Mind' or is 'Delusional of the mind'…but he makes every character tell him that at least 2-5 times in the first hour.
Large swathes of context are just…missing from scene to scene, and we as the audience are just expected to go with it. Characters are introduced as being important to the plot who we meet once or twice and then never see again, they have no impact on the plot ultimately. Theres a ton of subplots that are introduced that Gregg has commented DID have payoff in the final act, but in the Wiseau cut are introduced with intent…for one scene…and then just forgotten or abandoned. The gang dont even directly confront the shark until the final 15 minutes, they have some distant encounters before that, but it doesnt lead anywhere.
A BIG recurring point made throughout the film is that the guys drink and drive…A LOT. to the point that, if you didnt know any better, you'd think the cast NEEDED to be drunk in order to drive.
To sum it up on a high level. It feels like an alien was given a box containing scripts of scenes from two totally different movies out of order, and was asked to just 'pick some scenes from both films' and, with no formal film writing or editing experience, the alien picked the scenes he liked and then they just…SLAMMED the scenes together into a 105 minute script…whether the scenes flowed into each other or not.
Which…to me? is the thing I both love and hate about this thing. its all over the place which makes it feel weird, uneven, messy…but also manic and a bit crazy. theres so much going on in the scenes that it may take multiple watches just to catch most of the weird background bits or small acting choices that are just…hilarious to me.
But at the same time. I hate that its the way it is because it gets SO convoluted So quickly…and its really hard to take a film to heart when a not insignificant chunk of it is three guys drinking beer, chatting inanely, intercut with Tommy screaming, crying, scream crying or singing.
Direction wise…its all very loose, I believe a lot of this was directed by Tommy by way of giving the actors a scenario and a rough script, and…if Tommy was In the scene, people could improv…if Tommy WASNT in the scene, they had to stick to the script rigidly. Tommy's directional style is fascinating to me, as he doesnt seem to know how to get people to give him genuine emotion…He only (understandably) seems to know how to get 'Tommy Emotion' out of people…its that strange quality that made all the performances in 'The Room' so etheral…and he's managed that again here…theres no big 'memeable' moments here really…but still plenty of times where you'll hear something thats instantly quotable, and will probably go down well with die hard Wisaeu heads.
Visually, its a somewhat polished, but still very messy film, the disjointed script means getting the visuals to flow was always going to be a big problem, and it just…doesnt really work in my opinion…
But visually from a cine standpoint, its a mixed bag. Not terrible, but a bit problematic. the actual quality of the images, the compositions, the style of filming, I thought was actually pretty nice. It looks and feels like a mid to upper mid budget production with the rule of threes and the line being followed (for the most part). shots are crisp, detailed, deep, and mix faded palettes with some richer colour moments well…However, on the other side of things, the CGI is pretty bad, we're talking worse than 'Asylum' level CG, the scaling of the 'Big Shark' changes constantly, theres a lot of CG just kind of…meaninglessly dropped into the background of shots, like CGI'ing a surrounding neighbourhood, or adding random trees to shots, fake blood and water splatters are low budget and badly utilised. its bad CG basically for the most part.
And making things worse, because of the disjointed scripting and direction, it makes editing this a nightmare. With sequences barely holding together for the most part and random cuts that sometimes cut a conversation mid flow, cut the sound off mid noise or cut to something completely different mid flow that is ALSO midway through playing out…its hard to explain, but like…they'll establish a bar scene where the gang are talking, Patrick will say something like 'Sophia is the love of my life, I want to marry her and spe-' at which point the film will cut to the big shark mid way through destroying 3-4 buildings, and just as its about to finish smashing through a 5th, it'll then abruptly cut AGAIN to the next day, with Georgie in the shower, and his dialogue will open with '-ly…tomorrow im going fishing.'
Its making a purse from a sows ear really. but those cuts are horrendous and absolutely knocked me for a loop honestly. when I say that i've seen no budget productions with a tighter, more consistent edit than this? Im really not kidding.
Performance wise? …well, as mentioned a big chunk of this film is improvised, with a not insignificant chunk of it just being Tommy singing made up songs with a voice that sounds like coal trapped under a door, repeatedly shouting things like 'NO FEAR!!!' over and over again, repeating lines over and over again and…when he's run out of steam and doesnt have anything else to give, he'll cheekily dust off a line from 'The Room', or one of his other shows/films with a nod and a wink to the camera in doing so.
Tommy is kind of the selling point of this film, and if you want more Tommy, this film wont dissapoint, the rest of the cast are a bit dry though in my opinion, they're doing the best they can, but some are better with Improv than others, its already a stressful situation having to work with Tommy anyway, so having to do that when he wants to go massively off script, or pull you in on a minutes notice to film a 10 minute dance scene with a New Orleans jazz band…I can imagine would throw anyone off their A-game.
Even with that considered though, the best performances are just kind of…passable, and the worst performances range from truly awful to cultishly appreciated. Noone here really stands out, because they're not allowed to stand out…Only Tommy is. and he's…well…Tommy.
And as for the soundtrack? Begrudgingly added apparently. As in, Gregg saw a cut of this film that was being prepped for release, and realised that the entire film had NO music at all…he flagged it up to Tommy who then took the film away, and when Gregg next saw it (at a premier) he'd added library tracks to the majority of scenes, added the improv footage of him singing random songs, and added a LOT of footage of him and the cast dancing with street bands…I cant imagine how truly hollow this film would have been with ZERO music. Because even with it, it feels a bit generic in places…wild.
Overall? I had mixed feelings on 'Big Shark' in some ways, its the perfect 'next step' if you watched and enjoyed 'The Room' because it feels bigger, grander and even more disjointed and strange…but at the same time, I dont think its as enjoyable as 'The Room' and I dont think it has the weight behind it that made 'The Room' the success it was.
To that end, I think if you are a fan of the strangeness of Tommy Wiseau, you'll MORE than get your hit here, its a largely sincere attempt to make a 'proper' movie. and its those kind of conditions that I find Wisaeu thrives in. Im less endeared to him when he's playing up to the cameras or TRYING to be purposfully wacky. I'd maybe even go as far as to say, if you enjoy 'bad' movies or cult films, you might get a kick out of this.
But is this movie as accessible to general film goers as 'The Room' was? No. its a bit *too* weird for general audiences in my opinion and I feel they would either not get it, or would just be annoyed by it.
So from me? I'll recommend it if your already into the alt cinema scene, or if you enjoyed 'The Room'…but I think if your not really into that kind of thing, you'll already know this probably isnt for you.
TYTD Reviews 