Certainly not the catch of the week: The Meg review by Rashid Irani

After a placid first half, the monster fish creature feature picks up pace in the second, but still gives you little to invest in.

This overblown aquatic adventure pits British action icon Jason Statham against a ginormous, prehistoric shark that had long been thought extinct.

Having survived an attack by the same ravenous creature years ago, a former rescue diver (Statham) is lured out of retirement to confront his nemesis again. This film was stuck in development hell for the better part of two decades before Jon Turteltaub (of the two National Treasure flicks) clinched the assignment.

The presence of actors of Chinese origin like Winston Chan (playing an oceanographer), Li Bingbing (as his biologist daughter) and the scene-stealing Shuya Sophia Cai as the granddaughter attests to China’s ever-increasing co-production investments in Hollywood projects.

Jason Statham plays a former rescue diver who has faced the creature before, and is lured out of retirement to confront it.

What’s vastly missing is the element of fear. Things are disappointingly placid for the first half of The Meg; the second half, admittedly, is nerve-jangling.

Almost out of obligation, the film also includes a reference to Jaws. But unlike Steven Spielberg’s 1975 trendsetter, it fails to get the viewer invested in what happens to its characters.

Don’t go expecting The Meg to be the catch of the week and you won’t be too disappointed.