I should be the ideal audience for “Sharknado: The Fourth Awakens.” I find a truly bad movie to be as much of a fascinating miracle as a truly good one, just for different reasons. I can excuse all kinds of bad filmmaking if the movie gives me something memorable that says something about who or what brought that movie into being. I have sat through “Samurai Cop” and “MAC and Me” and “Rock ‘n Roll Nightmare.” I have seen “Miami Connection” more times than “The Philadelphia Story.” I have sought out and received Tommy Wiseau’s autograph.

But there’s a difference between gonzo outsider art like “Miami Connection” or an audacious failure like “Jupiter Ascending,” and a lazy, pandering mess like “Sharknado: The Fourth Awakens.” Ever since the first movie, the “Sharknado” series has been sold as a ready-made entry into the “so bad it’s good” canon, but with each successive movie it proves more emphatically that there is no limit to “bad” before a movie boomerangs back to “good,” and that simply keeping its foot on the gas is no substitute for knowing where the hell it’s going in the first place. Continue reading →