The Godfather could learn from Piranha 3D

Today, I resign myself to stating the obvious: Piranha 3D is incalculably better than The Godfather Part III. 

I’m not quite sure why I deemed it appropriate to freely associate one film with the other. Perhaps there’s something about a savagely unpleasant vertebrate that reminds me of aging mobsters and the Vatican. Perhaps I thought the random dark humor of Piranha would have been slightly improved upon if Al Pacino and Andy Garcia had shown up to offer the piranhas a stake in the Corleone Conglomerate. Maybe it was pure silliness on my part. Or maybe it had something to do with the energetically consumed reserves of “stinger missile” gin and White Rabbit Creamy Candy that have become essential to convincing my friends to come watch a movie so delightfully immune to mercy, queasiness, and character development. 

Whatever the culprit, my conclusion is the same.

For starters, the story line of The Godfather Part III doesn’t include schools of ravenous,   infernal, gore-spitting piranhas. And since the dangers of faceless mob-hired heli-gunners and Papal bank scandals can’t hold a candle to surrendering your torso to a set of teeth and gills, it isn’t hard to say which movie has the more intimidating antagonists. 

In The Godfather Part III, the subpar acting is agonizing on a massive scale. In Piranha, sloppy performance is considered a delicacy. 

The Godfather Part III stars Sofia Coppola, whose acting chops are renowned for making Selena Gomez look like Benicio Del Toro. Considering there is a cinephilic tradition of wildly applauding when Coppola’s character gets gunned down, the only thing that could have possibly redeemed her performance is if it ended with piranhas that found bad acting appetizing.

Far more impressively, Piranha stars real-life porn sultana Riley Steele, whose acting chops couldn’t be less relevant, and whose curves and fissures could cause grown men to forget where they live or how to perform basic arithmetic.The Godfather Part III showcases ludicrous plot developments. Ditto Piranha, but those are intentional and do not strain such credulity with “poison-the-Pope”-based conspiracy logic.

In the end, The Godfather Part III leaves you questioning why you didn’t stop at Part II. The only question Piranha leaves unanswered is, “If there is a problem with piranhas eating coeds, why don’t people just not go in the water?” The latter question is far funnier and less depressing than the former