Have you watched the hit new Netflix movie Under Paris yet?
Sadly, I have. It made last year’s shark movie Meg 2: The Trench look sensible.
Don’t be so dismissive. I think the Meg franchise poses a valid question.
Is it (as one Telegraph critic wondered): ‘What would happen if Jason Statham were to punch a giant prehistoric shark – twice?’
No, it’s: ‘Where will the sharks go if we wreck their habitat?’
Right, and according to this latest shark splatter-fest the answer is: up the Seine.
Well, why not?
Because they’re saltwater fish.
Under Paris deals with that: lead shark Lilith has been genetically mutated, meaning she can live in fresh water.
That’ll be the same mutation that allows her to survive the first part of the movie on a diet of submerged Renault Clios.
You realise you’re very much alone in not rating this film?
So I understand: 41 million views in five days when it launched on the streaming service earlier this month. I worry for Netflix viewers.
What about the crowds off to next month’s Paris Olympics?
There are no sharks in the Seine!
How do you know?
The biggest threat from swimming in Paris’s famous waterway isn’t sharks – it’s sh…
Shells.
Sorry?
Death wish: Donald Trump would rather be electrocuted than attacked by a great white
Live artillery shells left from the Second World War. The river’s full of them, apparently. Just like it says in the movie.
Have you stopped to ask yourself, though, what the odds are of them all exploding at once as the result of a fight between the French army and an infestation of catacomb-dwelling mutant killer sharks?
Donald Trump would take all this seriously.
I don’t think DT is worried about shark attacks.
But he is! Earlier this month, while on the campaign trail in Las Vegas, he said he’d rather die by electrocution than in a shark attack.
Shark attacks are a bit of a problem in the Mojave Desert, are they?
According to New York Magazine, Trump ‘debuted the shark-versus-electrocution tirade during a campaign event in Ottumwa, Iowa, in October 2023’.
Also weird.
A decade before that he tweeted: ‘Sharks are last on my list – other than perhaps the losers and haters of the world!’
What’s the list? ‘Guests I’ll welcome at the White House if I ever make president’?
His alleged mistress Stormy Daniels has said: ‘He is obsessed with sharks… He was like… “I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.”’
Well, in that case, Trump may be perturbed to know that Under Paris director Xavier Gens isn’t ruling out a sequel.
I noticed a map of London appear at the end of the movie. Maybe the mutant sharks are heading for the UK. Xavier Gens could set it anywhere with water. Under Leicester? Under Liverpool?
Under Ashton-under-Lyne?
Meanwhile Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor has been announced in a new shark movie due to start filming in Melbourne next month.
Where will the sharks be hiding this time?
In a hurricane.
Surely that threat could be mitigated by not going swimming in a hurricane?
I suspect not, but back to Under Paris: Netflix was so overwhelmed by fans posting on X to suggest better names for the movie that it mocked up a selection of alternatives.
Go on…
Shark de Triomphe.
Obviously.
In Seine, Chomps Élysées, Bon-Jaws…
Although I’d say one commentator posting under the YouTube trailer of the movie wins the pun prize.
What did they come up with?
‘If the final title card isn’t “fin”, we riot.’