Parents' Guide to Lake Placid 3

Losing the old woman who made this franchise funny leaves a sequel with nothing but bad CGI crocodiles. Lake Placid 3 misses Sadie badly, the part Betty White played in the first film and Cloris Leachman in the second. It has the sense to mention her, since the baby crocs she fed and nurtured still drive the story. Everything else runs by the formula, with a lot more bare breasts than before. The CGI might be the biggest villain in it. The crocodiles look like bad computer animation and aren't frightening, while the original used practical effects and they were incredible, not to mention quite scary. Director Griff Furst plays it campy and knows it, but this can only go so far. A character asks what the chances are that they all get lost and die, but everything goes downhill from there, including the crocs invading a supermarket, which predicted by nine years the monitor lizard that climbed the shelves of a Thai supermarket and went viral in 2019.

Colin Ferguson is very serviceable, tall and blond with a heroic quality that makes him easy to root for. Yancy Butler gets the eccentric part this time, playing Reba as Crocodile Dundee crossed with Rambo, wisecracking and matter of fact, like someone who walked in from a different, much more fun, movie. The rest of the cast is fine. The nudity and the sex scene exist to pull in teenage boys, but once those are over, the film has nothing else for them. Completists may be pleased by the film, but its lack of wit makes newcomers unlikely to watch the installments that came after.