If you're a fan of 80s comedies like "Revenge of the Nerds", "Vamp", "Beverly Hills Cop", "Weird Science", "Back to School" and dare I say "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure", I guarantee this movie will be time well spent. Everything from the snappy dialogue to the synthy soundtrack to the vivid lighting to 80s icon himself, Jon Lovitz, is like a wild time machine ride back to a time when movies were pure fun without being over the top gross or racy. I'm not sure if writer-lead actor Cameron Van Hoy intended it to be this way, but it sure nailed the genre in my book.
The plot is your basic "save the girl from the bad guys" routine but with some wacky twists. The girl is the target in a knife-throwing act which performs nightly at a dance club owned by a sleazy-yet-nerdy Godfather type gangster excellently played by Jon Lovitz. The girl's would-be-rescuers are two 22-year-old losers who live in a tent in one of their parents' back yard, having nothing to live for but a sketchy business plan of selling shark-proof wetsuits. Throw in a little harmless sexual tension like the mother having the hots for her son's best friend, and the son possibly being gay even though he feverishly denies it, and of course throw in a smokingly hot girl, and there you have it.
What makes this movie exceptionally fun is the way it jabs at a lot of movie clichés... taking us right to the edge of the cliché but turning it around 180 degrees. I won't ruin any of them, but we've got the tender-declaration-of-love cliché, the tough guy talking smack while he's getting beat up cliché, the best friends having an argument cliché (while they're tied back to back & trying to spit on each other, haha), and loads of others. While the movie doesn't fall into outright parody, you can definitely tell they're having fun with the audience.
I have to mention one scene in particular that had me laughing harder than I have in years: the "white boys rapping" scene. That alone is worth the price of admission. I can't think of a better way to waste an afternoon or evening than watching "Almost Sharkproof".
