Review: The Meg: Cheesy, but Deadly

The cornball factor in The Meg is off the charts, with dialogue so groan inducing that you could hear inadvertent laughs all through the screening where we finally met the great, great, GREAT White Shark.

But the action, and some of the humor, is good enough to make this an entertaining summer breeze of a flick.

Jason Stratham, as the deep sea diver Jonas Taylor, plays his usual perturbed, put upon character. He may also be the only action star you’ll actually believe can go toe to fin with a 75 foot shark.

The Megalodon in question is a previously thought extinct animal that apparently still thrives at the deepest levels of the ocean.

Those pesky scientists inadvertently release the behemoth into the shallow waters, and Jonas must first rescue those scientists, and then help them try to kill a shark that could pick its teeth with Bruce from Jaws.

Everything is predictable, nothing much is scary, but there is an action scene that stretches over the middle of the movie that is as thrilling as any you’ll see in Tom Cruise’s latest impossible mission.

And that’s saying something.

The movie seems to borrow from every shark movie, good or bad, that we’ve seen to date, including shots, and sometimes exact scenes, lifted from the first Jaws.

Put it a few notches below Jaws 2, but above the latest Sharknado.