Big Shark (2023)

Name Badge - Big Shark review by griggs

Tommy Wiseau clearly heard the words “creative freedom” and took them as a personal mandate, because Big Shark feels like nobody in the building said no to him even once.

Three firefighters set out to stop a shark supposedly big enough to bring down a bridge, and what follows is closer to community theatre with a marine-biology permit. The dialogue lands like it was written on the walk from the car park to the set: blunt declarations and friendship speeches heading nowhere in particular.

At heart, it’s a western that’s wandered onto the streets of New Orleans — a firefighting trio, one oversized fish and a mission nobody sensible would take on. The shark mostly just loiters in the background, though, because the real business here is friendship, and Wiseau’s still working through the same feelings he first unpacked in The Room, just wetter.

The shark itself is a wobbly CGI smudge that never shares a frame with the actors in any convincing way — I’ve seen more menacing clip art. Even Ashton Leigh, a veteran of Ozark Sharks, Mississippi River Sharks and Great White Waters, misses it entirely. Patrick spots the thing first, despite presumably never having seen one outside the script.

Wiseau plays Patrick exactly like Johnny from The Room, a little older and a lot more bewildered by his own dialogue. Patrick gradually dissolves into Tommy, leaving you with a character who feels like Wiseau wearing a different name badge.

He seems to believe every word of it, which almost makes the whole thing endearing. Then the next scene arrives and the feeling evaporates.

Half a star for the shark, and I’m taking it straight back for the CGI.