I put off watching this for ages partly because of the critical reviews I read, but now think some of that criticism has been unfair, and slightly missed the point.
There's nothing much really wrong with Octopus in the context of its genre. Several things consecutively explode into fireballs in the first 15 minutes, and that's not even mentioning the first glimpse of our friend the squid, I mean what do you want, blood? There are -so many- films that I've made a point of watching purely because they're reportedly bad, in the hope they'll be bad-in-a-fun-way. Most of the time they're bad-in-a-boring-way. This film isn't even technically bad: yes it obviously had a lower budget than Transformers: Dark of the Moon, but anyone who uses that against it is probably like that bloke out of Terror Firmer: "If you don't have the budget, don't make the movie." Drokk that stomm. Octopus performs admirably given the resources available to it.
The camera doesn't shake, the camera moves and editing techniques are largely tried-and-tested, but always executed perfectly adequately. The acting is exaggerated but the whole exercise was not a study in social realism. It's good old 80s-action-movie-style acting. They've even got an 80s-action-movie-style baddie (I think he says "lovely jubbly" at some point but it's hard to tell because of his cool 80s-action-movie-baddie accent).
There was a female lead, but that was more-or-less it for women cast members unfortunately. But she held her own and wouldn't have felt out of place even if they'd cut all the bits when she's just in her bra and/or pants. Other people have compared the male lead to Keanu Reeves, and although he doesn't really look or act like him, there was something similar there, I'm not sure what. He can move his face more than Keanu can. The scene where he'd HAD ENOUGH was reminiscent of the "room service" monologue from Johnny Mnemonic, that had something to do with it.
I better admit this now so you can decide whether or not to trust my judgement: I love Johnny Mnemonic and I think The Matrix is boring. This film was a laugh in a similar way to Johnny Mnemonic. The octopus is AT LEAST as impressive and convincing as that dolphin. Right yes, the octopus. The old fella himself. We don't only see him right at the end as some have said, that's a lie, he's either there or we're waiting for him to pop out again at any moment for at least the last half of the running time. He's...hang on, I don't know why it's suddenly a he, we never find out the gender, sorry; it's realised using a mixture of rubber tentacles (hurrah) and CG that's competent enough not to be distracting (so one-up on X-Men Origins: Wolverine and that sort of thing, at least).
The lighting like the acting is usually (intentionally) unrealistic and exaggerated (one shot of two actors' heads is nicely backlit so you can see all the hairs coming out of their noses), but it's not unpleasant to look at. Much better than the perpetual gloominess of the ocean they'd have to go for if it was a more serious film, I mean look at The Abyss, that film was TIRING to look at. Also it was SO DULL, at least Octopus has a sense of humour and the good grace to finish before the hundred-minute mark.
Scriptwise, the plot was fairly nonsensical, but again not distractingly so, and anyway WHO CARES, it's a MASSIVE MUTANT OCTOPUS. There were lots of lovely cheesy quotable lines too.
Anyway, all these things help to create what I'd be willing to bet was the intended tone. I'd stake my good name on it: -intended- tone. Anyone who thinks they're laughing at this film rather than with it is probably (most of the time) kidding themselves, the humour is self-aware and is one of the main things that kept me watching. This film is a laugh, it's funny, it's fun, and it wouldn't hurt you to watch it. If you disagree I'll fight you.
