TV As goofy as its title suggests

CBS hopes for ABC's blood in the water as it attacks a 'Desperate Housewives' rerun.
By ROB OWEN
SCRIPPS HOWARD
It's no Hallmark Hall of Fame production, but CBS's "Spring Break Shark Attack" (9 p.m. Sunday) is at least knowingly cheesy, a paint-by-numbers "Jaws" rip-off that seems designed for the sole purpose of luring young viewers to the network on Sunday night.
With a rerun of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" as its competition, the movie even snacks on the ladies of Wisteria Lane in an opening scene send-up. Four women, in all the appropriate hair colors, float on a raft in the ocean, sipping martinis while remembering their absent friend, Alice (intended as a stand-in for "Housewives' " Mary Alice, no doubt).
"Peace and quiet, isn't that what we were desperate for?" one of the women says. And then they're turned to chum.
Dumb script
The real story kicks in when Danielle (Shannon Lucio, a recurring guest star on "The O.C.," as CBS's "Shark Attack" promos continuously point out), the good girl of the piece, disobeys her parents.
"I don't trust those guys," Danielle's dad says of the boys at spring break.
"They're sharks! I'm not going to throw you in the deep end with some guys that are only after one thing. They can't help it. It's in their nature."
Screenwriter James LaRose clearly knows he's writing junk; if only he had as much fun with the dialogue later in the film. This knowing tone of self-mockery gives way to nothing but cliches once Danielle ditches a commitment to Habitat for Humanity (one can only be so good in these movies) and heads to Florida for spring break.
There she meets up with her brother, who's writing his thesis on -- how convenient -- tiger sharks! She makes goo-goo eyes at engineer-wannabe Shane (Riley Smith, "24"), a poor boy with college ambitions. (He's the young, impossibly attractive type found only in fiction who's not part of the "in" crowd but is really cooler than all the purportedly cool kids.) Before you know it, jerks are getting munched in a harbor and a girl gets pulled off a pier. To tell you this gives away nothing because you'll know it before it happens. "Shark Attack" is just that kind of predictable telefilm.
Smart sharks
Mostly all you see of the sharks are fins and the geysers of bloody water that inevitably result when they come near humans. Evidently these sharks were camera shy, rarely showing their eyes. Then again, the fin approach doesn't require quite as hefty an investment in special effects; it's like a movie about spring break made on a student's budget.
It may also be that the sharks are related to the lead bad guy in "Jaws: The Revenge"; like the shark in that movie (tag line: "This time it's personal!"), these sharks seem somehow sentient, first attacking swimmers on a floating platform and then going after their rescuers.