RoboCroc (2013)

A mysterious military payload is compromised, when a top secret unmanned spacecraft lands in a combination water park and zoo. Next generation drone nano bots, pre-programmed to kill, find a home in a prized twenty-something foot Australian saltwater crocodile named Stella. The normally mild mannered croc immediately changes personality and becomes combative. Rapid transformation from zoo showpiece to a metallic, lethal killing machine with two things on its mind...filling her belly and surviving. A military-type investigative, recovery team wants Stella and will butt heads with zoo personnel not ready to give her up. Some scenes may be a bit disturbing; after all a CGI crocodile can prove menacing. This SyFy feature stars Keith Duffy, Lisa McAlister, Steven Hartley, Corin Nemec and Dee Wallace. You may find Wallace meaner than ramped up Stella.

In this standard sub-par "Syfy" TV Movie, a water park called "Adventure Cove" is terrorized after debris from outer space causes a crocodile named "Stella" to turn robotic and attack people. Resident zoo-keeper Corin Nemec (as Jim Duffy), the man who brought "Stella" to the park, takes the heroic leading role. Newly hired marine biologist Lisa McAllister (as Jane Spencer) arrives, coincidently, to assist. Also appearing are sneaky scientist Dee Wallace (as Riley) and US military man Steven Hartley (as Montgomery). Already making the scene is Mr. Nemec's son Jackson Bews (as Rob). He may stand a chance with attractive Florence Brudenell-Bruce (as Sydney), who arouses with a bikini and other skimpy clothing. More fully dressed, Ms. Wallace is also fun to watch.**** Robo Croc (9/14/013) Arthur Sinclair ~ Corin Nemec, Lisa McAllister, Jackson Bews, Dee Wallace

Robocroc is one of those movies where you shouldn't expect too much from and had potential to be enjoyably daft. It has a great title, the scenery is quite nice(although the zoo doesn't really look much like one) and there are three quite good performances from Corin Nemec, Dee Wallace and Steven Hartley. Nemec has a lot of fun with his role and avoids becoming too much of a Steve Irwin clone, Wallace has a character that's ruthlessly evil and she relishes it and Hartley is wonderfully grizzled. Elsewhere in Robocroc, the movie, even when judging it for what it is, came across as rather messy from a personal perspective. The production values are a little drab- though there are much cheaper low-budget movies elsewhere- and the crocodile, who doesn't have much personality, looks more silly than menacing. The writing came across as cheesy and daft and not in a good way, I found myself either cringing in its banality, laughing out loud at how stupid some of it is and rolling your eyes at the cheesy tone it adopts. Some may find it enjoyably daft and light-hearted- and they're entitled to- and others won't, that's what opinions are for. The characters are not much more than underdeveloped clichés and despite the efforts of a few members of the cast are not easy at all to root for. And excepting Nemec, Wallace and Hartley the acting is not good at all, often of the dull-as-dishwater type and there is not much awareness of the situation or proper emotion. The story is the biggest problem, as said already it did judging from the title have potential to be daft in an enjoyable way. For this viewer though it was too dull to even be that. There is a severe lack of suspense. The premise is not much different from other "monster" SyFy movies and Robocroc doesn't do anything new with the formula at all, in fact it's all very predictable and at times confusingly structured as well. The pacing lacks momentum and the exposition scenes suffer from that and that they's rather talky and at times not always on-point. And sadly, the killings and the scenes with the crocodile, who isn't even introduced until half an hour in, are little better. The killings are not in the least bit suspenseful or fun- not helped by that they're not really shown- and the silliness becomes too much to really digest, very Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus-like. To conclude, Robocroc has a great title but apart from that, the scenery and three good performances it's pretty messy. SyFy have done far worse but that's not much consolation. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Trying to control a top-secret experiment, a military scientist reluctantly teams up with a zoo-keeper when it appears the experiment mutates one of the resident crocodiles into a cybernetic fusion and must try to stop it before it's rampage grows out of control.This here turns out to be quite an entertaining and enjoyably cheesy offering. While the general plot device of allowing a normal crocodile to be infected and infused with cybernetic robotics to turn it into a killing machine is flat-out ludicrous, the manner in which it goes about dealing with this is quite nice with the overall deception played throughout the film against the zoo personnel, and in return, the viewer so we don't know any more than what's told. This makes for a potentially-frustrating time since there's little nuggets placed that aren't quite as forthcoming in revealing what's going on as it should be, and the final twist that enables the whole conflict to continue on is quite irritating for it's decision to incorporate such a clichéd option to keep this one going after the appropriate finale that was given here. That said, there's plenty to love in the film's outright cheesiness, which is just pure fun with the film getting a lot of play out of the initial concept of a robotic crocodile going on a rampage with the as-per-usual lame CGI keeping the sections of robotics coming through the normal crocodilian skin looking rather cheesy, there's some nice action scenes of both the crocodile in the adjacent water-park chomping on tourists to the military's battles with the creature in the open and utterly failing. It's actually quite fun and enjoyable for what it is.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.