Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (2010)

Review by Sean Patterson



“You need a bigger gator, I’ll get you one.”
Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, starring former pop stars Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, is crass and poorly made. It somehow manages to make less sense than most Syfy original movies. The only conceivable way to enjoy this confusing mess is in a heavily altered state.
Giant pythons are on the loose in a backwater everglades town, decimating the alligator population. Local hunters are perturbed when the low gator numbers mean no hunting licences will be issued. Fortunately, they don’t have to rabble for too long before the python infestation is discovered, and they are enlisted to hunt down the snakes instead.
The next hour of the movie is a mess of 90’s era cgi, over-the-top deaths, and boring plot revelations. Experimental steroids are fed to alligators. The creatures grow larger and the bit players die. There are explosions. A giant python swallows a train. By the time the Gatoroids show up the entire joke has worn thin and the silly acting becomes tiresome. I cannot stress enough how poorly done the cgi and green screen effects are.
But none of that matters. The story is a flimsy pretext for terrible jokes and boring, predictable deaths. The most memorable part of the film is an exploitative, sexy food fight between Debbie Gibson and Tiffany. Both are wearing cocktail dresses which they prance in for the final 30 minutes of the film. I’ll be generous and assume the post production budget was slashed due to the amount of tape necessary to hold Tiffany’s dress over her breasts.
Debbie Gibson provides eye candy and little else. She traipses through the swamps in perpetually clean and dry daisy dukes. She’s the leader of an anti-hunting eco-terrorist organization responsible for the loose pythons.
Tiffany plays Angie, a park ranger with huge boobs, short shorts, and distractingly trashy butterfly tattoos on her left thigh. She exudes no authority and doesn’t do a good job of looking disgusted or angry or bereaved. I can’t help but think her botox-laden lips would be put to better and more believable use in a porn movie.
But Tiffany is by no means the worst example of acting in the film. That honor is collectively reserved for the local yokels, who show no aptitude for holding weapons or delivering their cheesy one-liners.
As an odd counterpoint to all the terrible acting, veteran character actress Kathryn Joosten shines as the older, more capable park ranger. Her cliche badass-old-bitch character should have been as tiresome as the rest, but Joosten somehow manages to exude some class until she is inevitably eaten by one reptile or another.
The direction and editing are incomprehensible. I’m still not sure if the story made any sense. I won’t be bothered to burn the calories going back and fast forwarding through it to find out. My own memories of the movie bore me.
Syfy, pronounced “Siffee” as far as I’m concerned, shed it’s sci-fi niche in order to broaden its programming options. From what I’ve seen, this move has been a complete failure. While trying to both recreate the success of Battlestar Galactica and hang on to their lucrative low-budget monster movie market, the channel has become the biggest joke on basic cable.
In case you care who wins, the python or the gatoroid, it’s actually neither. Tiffany’s gigantic bosom dwarfs both. This movie makes Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus look like Jaws. 2/10