Blake Lively’s character repeatedly asks locals what the name of the beach she is surfing, they won’t tell her, only that it’s a secret beach. It doesn’t take the audience very long to recognize the beach however, as it’s clearly marked Imaginary Island. What begins like a lively video advertisement for Roxy swimwear, quickly turns into a public service announcement for surfing alone. When Sarah Michelle Geller retired from America’s reigning worst film actress, the former Gossip Girl quickly stepped up to replace her. The Shallows doesn’t understand nature, geography or wildlife, and anyone familiar with Galveston, Texas will get a big laugh at the end when the Texas island gets misrepresented.
In search of the beach where her deceased mother once stood, Nancy (Lively) bums a ride from Tijuana local Carlos (Óscar Jaenada), after her friend nurses a hangover back at the resort. Seeking alone time, Nancy has found the beach she was looking for, even though Carlos refuses to reveal its name. Local area surfers invite Nancy to join them, but she declines, and intends to spend the entire day soaking up the sun and riding waves. Shortly after the other surfers pack it in for the day, Nancy discovers a badly injured and bloody whale. Before she can return to the shore, she is bitten by an enormous shark and barely makes it to a nearby rock slightly above the water. Alone, bleeding, and scared, Nancy must use her medical training and wits to survive this dangerous situation.
The Shallows doesn’t understand nature, geography or wildlife, and anyone familiar with Galveston, Texas will get a big laugh at the end when the Texas island gets misrepresented.
One reason I assume Nancy has discovered an imaginary island is the fact that within a ten hour period, the Texas surfer witnesses a pod of dolphins jumping over her, a badly injured grey whale, a mammoth shark and the most friendly seagull in all of North America (although the film is shot entirely in Australia). The fact that all those animals would be seen together in that time span or single location tests the boundaries of disbelief. Not to mention the behaviors of these animals, especially the monster shark, who either has a bottomless stomach or a crush on the blond haired babe, rarely reflect anything seen or studied in nature.
Early shots of Lively and her CGI’d face onto a stunt-double are stunning in combination with the underwater camera shots. Unfortunately, the waves created on the computer are a bit less aesthetically pleasing to the eye. I’m sure director Jaume Collet-Serra (you know the guy who got that amazing performance out of Paris Hilton in House of Wax) was hoping you wouldn’t notice his CGI waves with all the T&A shots of Lively he serves up. There have been a handful of actors who have successfully maneuvered through a film where they are the only one on screen, (Hanks in Cast Away, Bullock Gravity, etc). Lively talks to a seagull for most of the film, perched on a rock like she is auditioning for the live action version of The Little Mermaid. The Shallows honestly wasn’t that bad until the embarrassing climax which reaches an entirely new level of stupidity, culminating in one of the biggest 90-min wastes of time this year.
Final Thought
More embarrassing than thrilling.
1 thought on “The Shallows”
My family and I live north of Houston and have been to Galveston a few times. We were surprised Nancy was a surfer from Galveston, but when we saw the final scene of her in “Galveston,” we all lost it! Galveston looks NOTHING like that even on it’s most beautiful day. It was almost as if they did not research at all. Hilarious!