Directed by Stewart Raffill, 2007
Written by Ken Solarz

Put a bullet in the brain pan of any standing objectives planned for today. Obtain Croc. Netflix it. Blockbuster it. Go to Best Buy and steal it. Obtain Croc. Also obtain a platitude of alcohol of choice as well as friends to consume both with.

Make no mistake, Croc is a terrible movie, but it is terrible in the most delightful way. It has durable, albeit unremarkable, characters and plot. Plenty of third world computer muckery and enough shoddy English accents to keep a group laughing for the full 90 and beyond. Yes, I am recommending Croc on the merits of its inadequacies. More often than not, that is the only reason to recommend a film of such ilk. Every now and then an Abominable makes its way through the gauntlet and successfully pins the trifecta of humor, horror and aged cheese. While Croc is no Abominable, it is also no Ice Spiders. Think of it as a train wreck with clowns. Clowns with flimsy fake accents that crumble at a rate thrice as often as they stand.

A title like Croc is obvious. This iteration around the giant reptile in question is chomping down hundreds of locals in Thailand. Jack is our hero, co-owner of a zoo facing financial trouble as well as an investigation by an attractive agent of the local animal welfare agency. The zoo also happens to be on some prime real estate that a crazed land owner and his goon, whose names I’ve forgotten in less than 18 hours, want bad enough to hatch a plot to blame the recent crocodile attacks on the zoo. So that’s the game; find the real killer croc as well as save the farm. Oh, and Michael Madsen eventually shows up as the hunter seeking revenge on our toothy villain.  And then disappears.  And then shows up again.

None of that matters though. The plot is rugged enough to keep things roped together loosely with logic and incentive, but no one wants a night with Croc for its brain, anyway. The cheese is the prize and cheese there is plenty of.  The limb chomping never looks professional, but the situations are always prime time comedy. Just one, tiny example; croc in a crystal clear swimming pool that three people are oblivious to. Not only that, but after the attack goes down (on one person, I add), the entire pool, hundreds of gallons of water, turn an opaque red.  Actually, that description does not do it justice.  Seeing is believing.

Acting in Croc is extraordinary. Extraordinary! The accents, my God! No one in the cast has the same accent.  Everyone speaks crystal English, but their original tongues (mostly Australian, but some heavy Brits surface as well) slip in with hilarious regularity. There is a police officer, the most Thai looking of the bunch, who speaks in an unmistakable redneck, stoner twang that comes out of left field like a laugh rocket. The human villain, a supposedly powerful and crazy land developer, spends every second on screen with a stiff upper lip so as to hide his real-life braces. This lack of facial expression results in an accent that sounds like a lispy kid trying to boss around everyone at his Bar Mitzvah.

The makers of Croc likely did not set out to draw from this particular well of humor, but thats what they served and the movie going experience is better off for it. A perfect, nothing to do, friends over for drinks flick. This is why I trudge through piggy-bank budgeted, nobody cast, CGI stocked, Straight-to-DVD, Sci-Fi channel destined cinema masterpieces. I’ll suffer the dregs if it means stumbling across something with such astonishing, entertaining flaws.