There are child actors who grow up to look exactly the same as they did when they were children (think Corey Feldman), and there are child actors who look nothing like they did when they were younger.  Jerry O'Connell falls into the latter category.  Now thirty-six years-old, he's virtually unrecognizable and light-years removed from his role as the whining and under confident Vern Tessio in Rob Reiner's STAND BY ME twenty-five years ago.   In PIRANHA 3D, a mindless end-of-summer film of the highest order, O'Connell plays Derrick Jones, the booze-drinking, coke-snorting producer behind a "Wild Wild Girls" video series. 

Jones will do anything to get his money shot, including putting others into harm's way, something he does with reckless abandon.  In an effort to get the best locations, he enlists the help of Jake Forester (Steven R. McQueen of the CW's "The Vampire Diaries") who has boarded Derek's yacht with Kelly (Jessica Szohr of the CW's "Gossip Girl") and two of Derek's models (Kelly Brook and Digital Playground contract girl Riley Steele).  Jake is supposed to be babysitting his younger brother and sister, but the promise of T & A and a paying gig outweighs familial responsibility; he pays his siblings off to lie to his mother (Elizabeth Shue) who also is the town sheriff.  Kids will be kids, and after venturing out into their small boat the little ones end up stranded on an island surrounded by piranha-infested waters.  It's now up to their older brother to save them.  

Not too far away is a congregation of drunken Spring Breakers having their fair share of fun in the sun, oblivious to the danger beneath them.  Girls in bikinis and less abound in an MTV Spring Break-like atmosphere (look fast to catch porn star Ashlynn Brooke gyrating on the boat).  All the swimming attracts the piranhas like a magnet, which sets in motion a bloodbath that reminds one of the gorefest that ends Peter Jackson's DEAD ALIVE. 

As the film's resident underwater creature expert, Christopher Lloyd does his impression of his own Dr. Emmett Brown from BACK TO THE FUTURE and although he's good, it would have been funnier to have had Richard Dreyfus reprise his Matt Hooper role from JAWS in these scenes (which he does at the beginning with a rendition of "Show Me the Way to Go Home" prior to meeting a violent demise).  Of course, the real stars of this film are the titular CGI creatures that do a number on just about everyone - babes in bikinis are not off-limits. Greg Nicotero and his team provide great effects, as always. 

The early 1980's saw a resurgence of 3D film fare when movies like COMIN' AT YA!, PARASITE, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III, TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS, SPACE HUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE, JAWS 3-D, and AMITYVILLE 3-D all attempted to revitalize the 3D gimmick with less-than stellar results. 

The Real 3-D works well here, though it is not on a par with AVATAR, as that film's 3-D process was more costly.  The 3-D is obviously the main draw to seeing it in the theatre.  The suspenseful moments can been seen from the shore by any genre fan familiar with the tricks of the trade, and the film uses the barest bones of a plot to set the action in motion, but it benefits from a campy attitude - besides, how can you take seriously a movie where a piranha bites off a penis and spits it back out into the audience (dare I say penis-in-cheek?)