After watching Blake Lively get just absolutely Amity-Island-style terrorized by a Gigantic White Shark (GWS) in the movie “The Shallows” for roughly 1 hour, 27 minutes, one of two things can be assumed:
• One — America’s Sweetheart has clearly never heard of Sharkbanz®, the revolutionary and highly fashionable new wrist and ankle bands promising to repel even the most Steven Spielberg-scary of prehistoric predators and conveniently offered in three accessorizing colors.
• Or, two: Sharkbanz® is more or less a crock.
The plot of the movie is highly predictable and, as a result, theoretically un-spoilable, and goes something like this: Girl goes on definitive right-of-passage-type solo surf trip to remote location. Girl assures worried family she is indeed having a grand time and that trip is indeed just what the doctor ordered, via portable electronic video interfacing device.
Girl foreshadows movie’s next move by symbolically crunching into an apple. Gigantic White Shark literally crunches into Girl’s Sharkbanz®-less leg. Girl second guesses new-found self-reliance. Girl and Gigantic White Shark play cat-and-mouse for standard 90 Hollywood minutes. Good Guy wins.
Why anyone would go see a movie so formulaic is fairly obvious and boils down to one simple reason being, simply: Blake Lively.
But even with there also being some kind of fleeting reality-escaping value, in addition to viewing reason No. 1, you would almost have to think that the whole scriptable-plot and thing in general would have been avoidable should this Sharkbanz® invention actually work.
And who’s to say that it does not?
On the Sharkbanz® website, there’s all kinds of testimonials and claims and bannered 24-point-font words like “tested,” “patented,” “proven,” and Dr. Patrick Bryce standing there with his arms crossed, like, “Yeah, you can totally buy one of these, because I’m a doctor and look how confident I look about all of this,” and potentially hypothesis-proving underwater videos of totally-non-Spielberg-looking sharks flashing tail in deep-seated fear of a sock filled with chum guarded by a carefully wrapped seafoam band displaying the patented Sharkbanz® logo.
Apparently, Sharkbanz® uses something they call “special patented magnetic technology,” so they can’t tell us much specifics; however, Dr. B and his crossed arms assure us that it, indeed, works because, well… science.
I guess maybe I’m a skeptic, because, well, I’ve been burned before.
Just last week, in lieu of paying me back the 20 bucks I loaned him, Point Photographer R. Chris Clark offered me his own personal and highly-sought-after bag of “Dr. Elliot’s Wonder Seeds,” which he then assured me were not just a made up thing based off the magic beans from “Jack & the Beanstalk” that he was using to try to get out of paying me the 20 bucks.
Needless to say, I am not only still waiting for the beanstalk to grow but have now become even more skeptical of a few other things, including, but not limited to: R. Chris Clark, Dr. Elliot, Dr. Patrick Bryce, movies pretty much just based on other movies, the guy who emailed me yesterday explaining that he was the Prince of Lithuania or someone or somewhere and that he was in trouble and that he for some reason needed my bank’s nine-digit routing number to get out of it, sunscreen SPF ratings, the moon landing, Bryant Gumbel (oddly, I do trust Greg Gumbel), pretty much any major media outlet, all claimed shark-repellent products, pretty much any product claiming to do seemingly-impossible things,
We interrupt this week’s “Tripple Overtime” and most likely nonsensical rant to bring you a message from our sponsor: Giantsquidbanz™! Giantsquidbanz™: Spend most of your time 20,000 leagues under the sea? Tired of being attacked by giant squids down there? Well, Captain Nemo, you’re in luck! With Giantsquidbanz™’s special patented magnetic technology, free yourself from tentacles and get back to enjoying your underwater exile. But don’t just take it from me, ask Dr. David Elliot…
Hi, I’m Dr. David Elliot. Giantsquidbandz™ are tested, in the process of being patented, and proven. You can trust me, I’m a doctor. Buy your Giantsquidbanz™ before it’s too late...Giantsquidbanz™ is a division Pizzaseat™.com. Dr. David Elliot is not a medical doctor.
the whole “JFK thing,” gravity, the space-time continuum, 8-Minute Abs, multi-vitamins, 6-Minute Abs (oddly, I do trust 7-Minute Abs), pretty much any baseball player who hits a lot of home runs, anyone who works on Wall Street, the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Reserve, the Patriot Act, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Annexation of Puerto Rico play from “Little Giants,” Donald Trump Sr., Donald Trump Jr., Donald Duck, Donald Driver (fantasy football reasons only), expiration date labels on yogurts, IcyHot, Shaquille O’Neal, anyone over 6’5”, Kevin Spacey, whether or not I should believe the hype about “House of Cards” and actually watch it, whether or not I should believe the hype about “Game of Thrones” and actually watch it, people who insist that I should watch “Game of Thrones,” whether or not people actually read page-long run-on sentences about essentially nothing, and finally/of course/as always, any movie starring Adam Sandler.
With all that skepticism boiling, it doesn't seem very likely that Sharkbanz® do indeed actually work, or that Dr. Elliot’s Wonder Seeds will ever produce a magic beanstalk for that matter.
What does seem likely, is that just to be safe, and to potentially decrease the odds of ever finding myself in a Blake Lively “The Shallows”-type situation, I’ll probably eventually get suckered into dropping $65.99 on my own Sharkbanz® wristband in color seafoam. Before that, however, I’ll have to get that 20 bucks backs from R. Chris Clark so I can foot the bill.