Under Paris (2024) Dir: Xavier Gens
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I had no intention of watching this absurd sounding French shark film originally, but a few people said that I should check it out, which persuaded me to give it a go. I kept my expectations very low, after all, reviews weren't exactly great for Xavier Gens' Netflix original.
The budget wasn't huge for the film, but even so, I thought the CGI was pretty underwhelming. I thought it was being used sparingly at first, but then things went a bit bananas. Suddenly there was a lot of CGI happening, and none of it any good. It was almost funny how bad it all was.
There was some nice environmentalist messaging going on, which I really did appreciate. Sure, it wasn't at all subtle, but sometimes that isn't as important as the message itself. I quite liked that Gens made such an obvious deal out of the need to protect our oceans and marine-life.
The narrative wasn't great, and honestly fell apart entirely about half way through, where any semblance of serious storytelling gave way to ridiculous shark antics. I know the film wasn't exactly grounded in realism, but honestly, the audacity of it was pretty amusing at times.
Bérénice Bejo overracted her socks off in her lead role. She really tried to convey the importance of the plot, but boy, did she do it poorly. She wasn't unwatchable, but I can't pretend like she acted at all well.
Nassim Lyes was a bit better, but not by a substantial amount. He definitely felt a bit more believable, but he also seemed to be overacting up and down the Seine. As for the rest of the cast, it was mediocrity in abundance. I'll still throw out some mentions though; Léa Léviant, Anaïs Parello, Sandra Parfait, Anne Marivin and Ibrahima Ba.
Overall, this was a pretty awful film in a lot of ways, but I won't lie when I say that I did have a good time watching it - even if it was because I was laughing so much at how bad it was. The message of the film was nice, but everything else was so absurd and so bad, I just had to laugh.
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