Jaws 2

Apparently filmmakers didn’t feel the need to leave “Jaws” alone. Instead, they thought they could make a sequel to this great film. What did we get? The less than average sequel released in 1978, “Jaws 2.”

Want to know the sad part about this film? When you watch it, you will immediately miss Spielberg in the directing chair. Instead, Jeannot Szwarc directed this film, and the end result is that it’s not even that scary. The screenplay was still based on some of Peter Benchley’s original characters. It’s basically a rehash of the first film, which is based on a series of shark attacks on the fictional island of Amity. I guess you could call this resort something like Long Island which could resemble something you would see in the Caribbean islands.

Roy Scheider returns as Chief Martin Brody, and so do Lorraine Gray as his wife, Ellen, and Murray Hamilton as the Mayor. The remaining cast is mostly consisted of teenagers, making this film feel more like a teen flick, which is what it pretty much plays as. Vincent Canby of “The New York Times” said in his review that the teenagers are, “all of whom look enough alike as to make it virtually impossible to remember which kid has been gobbled up in what sequence. Not that it matters much.” The reason being is that the screaming in this film is so overused that you will not feel any sympathy towards these retards if they got eaten.

Some of the film can be scary, but it has been dropped so low in this sequel that there is no climax that gets built up. It just drags on and on making you feel so bored. Seriously, it feels more like a film that was made specifically for television than for the theaters.

Another mistake that they made is that they decided to show a mechanical shark really early. Canby comments on this by saying, “One of the canny decisions in "Jaws" was the withholding of such visual information until near the end, by which time suspense had overwhelmed logic to such an extent that our imaginations were in league with the movie makers'.” That’s what made “Jaws” so scary because all you saw was the fin for a good majority of the movie. Since the shark is shown really early in “Jaws 2,” you’re not really so scared as you were when watching the first one. Canby says that the shark in “Jaws 2” looks like one of those mechanical sharks used in the “Jaws” Disneyland ride, which I remember going on when I was six. Obviously I was scared because I didn’t know that it was all staged.

Bottom line: this film is not as good as the first. But what do you expect? They are trying to capitalize on the popularity of the first one, and they made this horrible sequel. You would miss Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss from the first movie, since Roy Scheider pretty much plays it solo in this one. I would have to give this film a 5.

Do you really want to continue reading these reviews? Alright, well you asked for it. You’re punishment for reading the reviews of horrible films. Stay tuned tomorrow for the continuation of my “Jaws-a-thon.”