It is ridiculous, cheesy popcorn fun. And Statham, God bless him, knows exactly what kind of guilty pleasure he’s signed on for — Sharknado with a bigger budget and a much bigger monster.

If the shark-versus-Statham bout doesn’t tickle you, the shark-versus-Pekinese sidebar might. Not quite killer, but it’s rare to see a 21st-century blockbuster having this much fun – right through to its sign-off – with its own premise.

There are no depths to which The Meg won’t sink. But as trashy cinema goes, it all feels a little too well behaved.

Audiences in the mood to be scared will certainly send their popcorn flying during a few tense moments of The Meg. But they’ll also wish the movie had bothered to find an equivalent to Robert Shaw’s USS Indianapolis speech in “Jaws.” When the human characters are reduced to chum, it’s hard to care about them getting eaten.

The movie dawdles along, boring us as it does, in between action sequences. There’s a good chase or two, a generic escape here and there, but almost no cool lines and no catch-phrases.