The summer movie season is starting to wind down, but there are still a few major motion pictures left to hit the silver screen. One of those is finally surfacing this weekend in the form of The Meg, a science fiction/horror blockbuster that sees Jason Statham and his supporting cast combating a 75-foot Megalodon shark, a creature long thought extinct. Reviews for The Meg are finally flowing in, and overall, it looks like the Jon Turteltaub-directed movie is ranking towards the negative end of the mixed spectrum.
Starting off, CinemaBlend's own Mike Reyes gave The Meg two and a half out of five stars, proclaiming in his review that the movie takes itself way too seriously and that the studio would have been better off releasing the R-rated cut.
In the process of attempting to make The Meg a movie full of stupid fun, they forgot to have fun, but stayed square in the lane of stupid.
The Wrap's Alonso Duralde also wasn't fond of The Meg, saying in his review that although the movie nails the visual effects, the starring characters are uninteresting and lacking.
...Because director Jon Turteltaub is more interested in set pieces than in human beings, there's very little to care about between appearances of the title creature.
Giving The Meg a C+, Matt Goldberg from Collider said that the movie drags as it gets into the latter half, and while the movie is "good for what it is," the execution felt off.
There are some glorious highs in The Meg, and yet you always feel like it could go a little further, be more bonkers, shave off some of the runtime and go a little grislier with the chomping.
Reacting more positively to The Meg, Slashfilm's Matt Donato gave The Meg a 7.5 out of 10 score, noting that the actors sometimes feel like they're performing in a different story, but overall it's a "carnivorous Asylum-on-steroids megablast."
The Meg has its (slight) issues (including the gross underuse of Ruby Rose as the awesomely named Jaxx Herd), but ultimately achieves desired results for fans of such animalistic creature features.
Back to The Meg detractors, Eric Kohn from Indiewire gave the movie a C grade and declared that it fails to live up to what Jaws and Piranha 3D did before it.
Statham does what he can to salvage this cartoonish marine showdown, but director Jon Turteltaub can't resolve two very different tones.
Finally, Entertainment Weekly's Chris Nashawaty stamped The Meg with a B-, summarizing it as entertaining "nonsense."
The CGI is mediocre at best, and a romantic subplot with a single-mom scientist (Li Bingbing) is sentimental hooey. But it is ridiculous, cheesy popcorn fun. And Statham, God bless him, knows exactly what kind of guilty pleasure he's signed on for --- Sharknado with a bigger budget and a much bigger monster.
These are just a sampling of the reviews for The Meg, so feel free to browse around online to find out what other critics thought, or judge the movie for yourself when it swims into theaters this Friday, May 10. If you're curious about what other movies hit theaters later this year, look through our 2018 release schedule.
