Mega Python Vs. Gatoroid Review by Bobby LePire. Edited by Courtney McAllister.

 

The title of this movie is “Mega Python Vs. Gatoroid”, but a more accurate title would be “Debbie Gibson Vs. Tiffany”; as they star in the film, and set the two titular creatures in motion to fight. This film is as fun as it sounds, I promise you that.

 

The story starts off with Ms. Gibson and her stoolies breaking into a laboratory and stealing all the animals and reptiles there. They then proceed to release these creatures into Florida's everglades, despite most of the species not being native to that habitat. Gibson’s crazed bitch, Dr. Nikki Riley, states that “...nature will always work itself back out”, no matter what animals can thrive in what conditions. Dumb ‘scientist’ (her job proper is never fully revealed) is super dumb!

 

Once the snakes are free, they decimate the everglades’ already dwindling alligator population. Due to their time in captivity, the pythons grow exponentially larger. This causes Tiffany’s park ranger, Terry O’Hara, to get quite desperate (even moreso after a traumatic event caused by the snakes), and feed the remaining gators super steroids.

 

Director Mary Lambert keeps the pace going smoothly, and, along with editor Shawn Thompson, keep the audience engaged by having the scenes match nicely with the amazing Chris Ridenhour’s score. All that is to say, the movie has a sense of urgency and driving force straight from the opening titles and it doesn’t let go until the film is over. The action scenes are fun and exciting, while never feeling repetitive. There’s a “transformation montage”, where we see the gators and pythons grow from slightly bigger than usual to monstrously, terrifyingly large. While it lasts a little too long for my taste, it is stylishly shot, and visually brings a lot to the story. It’s always appreciated when a movie does something visual to move the story along, as film is a visual medium.

 

Tiffany as the park ranger gives a strong, sympathetic performance that runs the gamut of emotions- annoyance, anger, depression, grief, and super villainy levels of crazy. Debbie Gibson is less convincing as the activist, with some of her line readings sounding strained, but she does fare better during the action. As Dr Diego Oritz, A Martinez gives the best performance in the film. A very serious and concerned snake expert, he’s levelheaded and interesting. Former Monkee Micky Dolenz shows up for a fun and slightly self-deprecating cameo.

 

Naomi Selfman’s screenplay does have some clunky exposition dumping moments, and resolves our two leads’ issues far too quickly. However, it also has a wry humor about itself- “I mean, what’s crazy about this. Feeding to steroids to gators. There’s nothing crazy about it”- is pretty amusing, especially because of its deadpan delivery. There’s a quick and not totally unexpected potshot taken at publicists, “PR people are crazy!”, that still had me guffawing.

 

Incredibly gifted composer Chris Ridenhour delivers yet another epic and rousing score. This one more upbeat and percussion heavy than the elegant classical style of “Jack The Giant Killer”. It helps underscore the rising tensions, by having some slow, light strings- just enough to ring in your ear, but nothing too heavy, until the big finish happens. The score also compliments the fun of seeing a mega python bang around a gatoroid (or vice versa) by injecting the action beats with some zest.

 

However, the best part of the movie is not the score, the script, the acting, or the solid directing. It’s one brilliant, hilarious sequence, involving something I never knew I wanted to see- Tiffany and Debbie Gibson get into an all out brawl during a fundraising event. Throughout the course of this fight, they throw each other onto the ground, over and into chairs/ tables, and then get into the nastiest foodfight I have ever seen. Cake being smeared into cleavage. Jello being dumped all over each other. Wine being poured into their hair. Each moment the fight goes on, the more over the top and outrageous it becomes. So, you know, the way more awesome and fun it becomes! The whole movie is worth it just to witness that insanity.

 

However, things aren’t just peaches and cream here. The night driving sequence are all set against a pure black backdrop. This looks so odd, it jars you right out of the film. The CGI, from Joseph Lawson, does look convincing, but early on, when there are dozens of real snakes, and a small handful of CGI’d mega pythons, the disparity is too great to not be distracting. This flick also utilizes some odd bouts of CGI- like for the eggs of the animals. I am presuming styrofoam was too expensive for the budget, because I can envision no other reason for such a thing to be CGI’d. Not just CGI’d, but very blocky, and obvious, to the point of hilarity.

 

Also, the time lapses throughout the film are quite disconcerting. From the beginning of the film to the introduction of Oritz, it has been 6 months. Even considering the long montage, the longest amount of time I’d buy into is 6 weeks, not 6 months. It’s odd. Then the movie jumps another 6 months, and that’s where the ‘cake fight’ happens. So, this movie spans over a year. That’s just disregarding suspension of disbelief for the hell of it, not because of some story necessity.

 

Unfortunately, the biggest fault the movie has is Gibson’s character. Yes, the actress isn’t the best, but she does have her moments, and is having fun. No, it’s just that this character, as written, is the biggest hypocritical bitch imaginable and is impossible to root for. She makes a big deal of allowing the wildlife to be free, but has no consideration of where the animals properly belong, which can destroy the animals (no prey for them to eat) or the habitat (the animals destroy the natural population). So after the epic fun of the fight, our two leads team up to take down their respective monstrous creations.

 

This change of heart for Riley is impossible to buy into, and is quite rushed. It’s rather sad that this is the case, as the film’s most enjoyably crazy action moments are after they team up. The carefully engineered way our heroes lead the monsters away from the city, while not scientifically sound, at least seems as plausible as everything else going on.

 

Thanks to all the cake fights, huge creatures, silly one-liners, and some seriously glaring issues, this film is a perfect bad movie party movie- just absurd and enjoyable enough to be fun, just bad enough to easily be riffed.