“Sharkman,” a no-budget shot-on-video feature from Florida, is so horrendously awful that there is almost no fun in piling abuse on its ineptitude. While no one would honestly expect a B-Movie superhero spoof to be “Hiroshima, Mon Amour,” at the same time it is astonishing to witness a film fail at every level so acutely almost immediately after the credits finish.
Briefly (since it really isn’t worth dwelling upon), “Sharkman” focuses on a nerdy comic strip artist whose claim to fame is the title character — a superhero who runs around in a shark costume and drops bad one-liners and villains. Through the infernal magic of the movies, the artist absent mindedly wishes that Sharkman could come to life and, lo and behold, he does. Except the flesh-and-blood Sharkman is an obnoxious, road show version of Jim Carrey who goes to endless lengths to gain a laugh and fails dismally with each pratfall, raised eyebrow and smug gesture. Don’t ask where this is going, because the trip is less than bountiful.
“Sharkman” is crammed with some of the very worst comedy imaginable: included here are a crummy agent who scares up product endorsement deals for adult diapers and hemorrhoid pillows, a policeman who is really a male stripper for the “Police 2 Please” agency, and a nagging mother who comes through the telephone with a voice that sounds like a middle-aged woman doing Tweety Bird imitations. No one in the unattractive cast or behind the camera shows signs of talent and the film is drowned in a miserable electronic score which makes elevator music sound like Sun Ra. Even the comic strips that are supposedly the genesis of the Sharkman character are amateurish.
The only reasonable use for this film is to inspire do-it-yourself types to install a woodburning stove, fill it with logs, light a match, and throw videos of “Sharkman” into the flames. The year has barely begun and “Sharkman” has already earned a berth among the worst of 2001.
