Under Paris (Netflix streaming 2024) If you thought France's opening ceremonies for the 2024 Olympics were downright weird.....you ain't seen nothin' yet.
That grand opening, as bonkers and off-the-rails a spectacle as you'd thought you'd ever watch on TV pales in comparison with what a bunch of French filmmakers did to the well-worn genre of "You gotta be ****in' kidding me!" shark movie.
We've gotta hand it to them......'Under Paris' makes the 'Sharknado' comic atrocities look like Academy Award Winners. And believe us, that kind of unabashed craziness takes serious, dedicated commitment to pull off.
In a spot-on metaphor for the movie itself, our story opens in an ocean full of floating garbage. Enviromental activist-oceanographer Sophia (Berenice Bejo) is searching for big-ass shark Lilith, on whom she's stuck a tracking device. Sophia's husband and two other guys dive under the fields of floating trash to get up and close and personal with Lilith. Bad move, boys.
After Lilith's gobbles up those three suckers, a broken distraught Sophia exiles herself to tour guiding at a Paris aquarium. But that's also near where another environmental group of rebel rousers has tracked Lilith making herself at home in the filthy waters of the Seine.
To Sophia's horror, Lilith's mutated in all sorts of disturbing ways. She's adjusted to fresh water and can pump out mass quantities of shark babies all by herself without need of shtupping a boy shark.
In a lake underneath the catacombs, Momma Lil's bred a swarm of offspring......right on the eve of the Mayor of Paris's pride and joy, a Triathlon race in the Seine by scores of competitive swimmers. Whoo-hooo! Lilith can hear that dinner bell ringing......
The film's finale does not disappoint. It more than delivers every gory, blood-soaked, ridiculous moments you could ever possibly dream of.....a veritable carnival of carnage that doubles down and escalates into apocalyptic, demented delirium.
We don't mind admitting we giggled like an 8th grader as Lilith snacked on the Triathlon-ers like it's all-you-can-eat-humans night. Throw in unexploded World War 2 shells blowing the living crapola out of every Seine bridge, then touching off a tsunami and you know you're wallowing in Guilty Pleasure Valhalla.
If we applied normal critical standards to 'Under Paris, of course it's a Zero.......
But for those of us who live to uncover and revel in a take-no-prisoners piece of unredeemable lunacy, a trip down the rabbit hole of cinematic madness.......this one's a 4 star (****) treasure.
Long live our gal Lilith, who, if we understand the animation of the end credits, has deployed her shark army into every single waterway on the globe. Can't wait for the "Wrath Of Lilith" sequel....
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