The Meg

(M) ★★

Director: Jon Turteltaub.

Cast: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao, Cliff Curtis, Shuya Sophia Cai, Page Kennedy, Robert Taylor, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Jessica McNamee, Masi Oka.

Aquaman had a lot to answer for.

What's scarier than the shark in Jaws? A bigger shark! And that's why we got Deep Blue Sea in the '90s. And the terribly made Mega-Shark series between 2009 and 2015 (expect that to make a comeback shortly).

And here we are at The Meg AKA Jason Statham versus a giant shark. Believe it or not, but this film started life as a book (much like Jaws did) back in the '90s. It languished in development hell for two decades until it finally surfaced as this Chinese-American co-production (hence the setting off the coast of China and the large number of Chinese actors in the film) which bears little resemblance to its source material.

While I'm as much a fan of big-dumb-fun movies as the next man-child, The Meg is mostly just big-dumb. It takes itself laugh-out-loud serious at times rather than being laugh-out-loud funny, and its attempts to shoehorn emotion and character development into proceedings is average at best and painfully awkward at worst.

Statham stars as Jonas Taylor, a deep-dive rescue expert turned functioning alcoholic after a rescue attempt went somewhat wrong. Jonas claimed a giant underwater creature was responsible for the misfortune, and you can probably guess where this going.

When a billion-dollar research project inadvertently comes in contact with a similarly huge marine beastie, stranding a sub crew on the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the scientists turn to Jonas to come to the rescue. But what have they found lurking near the ocean floor (I'll give you one guess)?

The predictability of The Meg is not a major problem - in fact, it subverts expectations from time to time. It's the combination of a largely po-faced approach and inability to land a joke that sucks the air out of this underwater adventure. The likes of a Samuel L Jackson getting eaten mid-speech a la Deep Blue Sea wouldn't have gone astray. Or maybe casting someone a little more self-deprecating than Statham. Or casting two leads with more spark than Statham and Bingbing. Or editing and shooting the jokes that are in there better so they actually land.

The likes of Rose, Kennedy and Ólafsson attempt moments of comedy, each of which sink like broken sub. Only Curtis manages to land laughs, almost in spite of the film. Wilson also has a good crack at it, but again is undone by the tone, pacing and style of The Meg.

The film never celebrates its B-movie status or over-the-top qualities and as such, never gets the "fun" to go with its "big dumb". The only things separating it from the Mega-Sharks and Sharknadoes of the world is the general quality of the cast and effects, but those shlocky series at least realised it was all a big joke.

This is aiming to be more like Jaws or Jurassic Park, but it lacks that next level of style, finesse, talent, direction, character and a tone to suit its subject material. That's not to say big beast B-movies have to be hilarious - the recent Godzilla remake is a good example of an oh-so-serious one. But that got the tone right on that delivery. It didn't splash about in a pool of bad jokes while being weighed down by its own sense of gravity, like this does. It decided it was going to be a story about family, set against the backdrop of a disaster movie.

The Meg strives to be the next great shark movie - the Jaws for the CG generation. But it's sadly not, and the film sinks as a result.