The “Jaws” series is perplexing. The original is one of the most revered films of all time. The original summer blockbuster. The movie that made vacationers afraid to go in the water for years. “Jaws 2” saw a decrease in quality as Steven Spielberg departed, knowing that it could not be done better. After all, now that the audience had seen the shark, his Hitchcockian approach to suspense wouldn’t fly. When that film failed and it became obvious that the series could never live up to the original, Universal decided to rely on a gimmick with “Jaws 3-D.” The result was an abomination when compared to what preceded it. It was so bad that they decided to completely ignore the events of “3-D,” recast the characters, and they wouldn’t even give the title a number. Thus, “Jaws: The Revenge” was born. It is impossible to decide whether “3-D” or “Revenge” was worse, solely because they are both so bad that they are impossible to analyze from a quality film standpoint. Unlike the first three films in the series that were notorious for their challenging production issues and constant delays, this film was thrown together in 5 months. The story opens in Amityville where a great white inexplicably happens to be lurking in the water, kills a policeman (who we pretend wasn’t a SeaWorld employee in the previous film), and forms a sort of psychic bond with Mrs. Brody. She flees to the Bahamas to live with her son Mike, a graduate student studying marine biology (who we pretend wasn’t an engineer in the previous film) and to escape the shark… who manages to follow her there a day later. This film has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Let that set in. Michael Caine could not accept his Oscar because he was filming “The Revenge,” but even an Oscar-winner can’t bring any quality to the silly dialogue and unreasonably farfetched story. The acting is simply horrendous and it was a sincere challenge to get to the end of the film. The film needs the original’s slow buildup of suspense but instead, we are left with the 10% of the film where we see the shark and the other 90% where the cast is obviously biding time until the next action sequence. I would love to see a “Jaws” reboot someday, solely so that this doesn’t have to be our final taste of the franchise. Whatever you do, please watch the original and let that be the only “Jaws” story that you know. Ignorance is bliss.
[Pictured: Once you’ve incorporated a shark attacking an airplane, you know that it’s probably time to stop making these movies]
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