Lake Placid Cert 15

If you go down to the lake today you're in for a big surprise. If you go down to the lake today you'll never believe your eyes, `cause there's a great big thirty foot crocodile biting people in half, and he still feels hungry.
`Lake Placid', is written and produced by David Kelley, the creator of T.V's Ally McBeal and it shows. In fact you get the idea that Mr. Kelley was splashing around  in his bath one day and thought `Hey, this water stuff is pretty cool, how about a film with Ally, water and...just then his rubber crocodile came floating to the surface... yeah that's right a monster croc' and so a cinematic jewel was born.
`Lake Placid' is not a film to be taken seriously, in fact it sends the whole genre of `monster animal horror films' (i.e. Jaws, Anaconda, King Kong) up so well, it really is a breath of fresh air.
The plot, for believe it or not there is one, centers on Kelly Scott (Bridget Fonda in full McBeal mode) a museum paleontologist who's dispatched to a lakeside wilderness in Maine to find out what bit a diver in half. On arriving she meets Game Warden, Jack Wells (Bill Pullman) and the local sheriff (Brendan Gleeson) and off they go to the scene of the grizzly crime, Lake Placid.
What follows is an enjoyable hour and a half of  schlock horror and Oliver Platt hamming it up for he's worth as the eccentric philanthropist Hector Cyr.
In short, if you fancy a film with more laughs than scares you find it hard to beat `Lake Placid'. It's not so much a croc it's more of  an Ally-gator.