Don’t knock it — Alligator is about the best possible giant alligator movie you could ever hope for, and it’s actually a much better movie than a giant alligator movie deserves. It all starts when a little girl buys a baby alligator at a carnival, which is promptly flushed down the toilet by her animal-phobic father (the fool!); twelve years later, the beast is lurking in the sewers of Chicago (or somewhere in Missouri, depending on whether you believe the film’s dialogue or the license plates on the cars) and has grown to be 36 feet long (or however big or small a particular scene needs it to be), thanks to making regular meals out of discarded lab animals that had been the test subjects for shady growth experiments. Robert Forster plays the world-weary cop on the case who strikes up a romance with a hot reptile expert (Robin Riker) — who also happens to be the former baby alligator owner, now all grown up like her would-be pet. The alligator scenes are a lot of fun, particularly after it busts out of the sewer and starts eating kids in swimming pools and crashing wedding parties, but John Sayles’ witty script and a cast that plays it straight transform this silly monster movie into a smart satire, complete with sewer graffiti that references The Third Man‘s Harry Lime.
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New On Netflix: Alligator