The Ramones are not really cute enough to be a teen protagonist’s crush, but part of their appeal has always come from an incongruity between their superstar ambitions and their considerable limitations, both intellectual and aesthetic.

The Piranha franchise is frequently described as a JAWS rip-off, but this is a lot more fun than JAWS. The pacing is more even, there’s more comedic relief, the action is bigger, and most importantly, the killer fish are a government-created bioweapon (similar to those Plum Island ticks irl… if you believe the unsubstantiated rumors). Is it a great movie? No. It’s just better than the horribly overrated JAWS.

Action scenes are good and tense, everything else less so. When Marc Maron showed up as a radio DJ, I half-expected him to launch into a stamps.com ad.

A slasher that transcends (and predates) “the Slasher.” All American. Power tools and bbq. None of the European tricks Carpenter brought in later.