Jaws 2 Review

Jaws 2 — 

One of the inevitable realities of life is that Hollywood studios, with their play-it-safe attitudes about creativity and their need to maximize profits, often create "series" and "franchises" from movies that were never intended to be first chapters of anything.

Sometimes, as in the case of Paramount Pictures' The Godfather, Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Trek: The Motion Picture, one successful movie can spin off two or more sequels that might vary in quality but are more or less still watchable.  (It helps, of course, if there is a plan to make more movies in the creators' minds, as was the case with the Indiana Jones series.)

Universal Studios, though, has a none-too-surprising track record of milking one film's success to the nth degree by commissioning mediocre-to-bad sequels that then diminish the original movie's reputation.  (Don't believe me? Look at what happened with 1970's Airport.)

Considering just how awesomely successful Steven Spielberg's 1975 shark-attack film Jaws was when it was released, it is not terribly surprising that Universal's executives would want to give it the Airport treatment and green-light a sequel which would bring in more money to the studio's coffers.

Jaws 2: Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the movies......

What is surprising about Jaws 2 is that it was written by Carl Gottlieb and Howard Sackler, who had also collaborated (to some extent) with Peter Benchley on the first film, taking out the dull and melodramatic bits of Benchley's novel and coming up with a true classic. That original screenplay, along with Spielberg's sharp direction, the quality performances by Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and the late Robert Shaw, plus John Williams' effective and heart-pounding score, made Jaws work as well as it does.

Sadly, here Gottlieb and Sackler fall prey to sequelitis, setting the film a scant four years after Amity Police Chief Martin Brody (Scheider) faced his own mortality and managed to vanquish a great white shark aboard the sinking fishing boat Orca. Indeed, the film's first shark attack is a clever homage; it takes place near the Orca's wreck.

Of course, Brody finds evidence that points to another shark attack, including a camera owned by one of the unfortunate "shark snacks," and of course, he tries to warn Amity Mayor Larry Vaughn (Hamilton) and real estate developer Len Peterson (Joseph Mascolo). Vaughn, apparently, still has a "don't rock the boat" attitude that should have been cured by the previous incident with a shark, and Peterson is only interested in building a new hotel right on the Amity beach. With dollar signs apparently dancing in front of their eyes, Vaughn and his cronies are in no mood for Brody's shark tales.

Martin Brody: I think we've got another shark problem.
Mayor Larry Vaughn: Are you serious?
Martin Brody: You bet I'm serious.

As in Spielberg's film, the pol and the money guy get their way even when the corpse of a killer whale washes up on the beach with what look like shark bite marks, and finally, after Brody persists on taking anti-shark precautions, Mayor Vaughn fires the police chief. Meanwhile, Brody's sons Mike and Sean (Mark Gruner, Marc Gilpin), Larry Vaughn, Jr. (David Elliott), and a group of assorted teenagers has formed a sailing club, an activity that, predictably, will put them very much in harm's way as the new shark roams the waters off Amity.

Also reprising his Jaws role of Deputy Leonard Kendricks is Jeffrey Kramer, whose character still seems a mite clueless and naive.

Martin Brody: Oh, Hendricks, good! Right this way. Excuse us, please. I want you to come in here and, er, check out this 908.
Hendricks: What the hell's a 908? I've never heard of a 908!
Martin Brody: 908 means get me outta there!

My Viewpoint: Given the phenomenal box-office and critical success of Spielberg's film, it stands to reason that the bar was going to be high for this movie to reach. Even with the participation of producers David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck, producer/production designer Joe Alves, and composer John Williams, the absence of Richard Dreyfuss and director Spielberg are keenly felt. Whether the latter were unavailable because of Close Encounters of the Third Kind or simply didn't feel a sequel was necessary, it doesn't matter. Gone is the banter between shark specialist Hooper and the landlubber Brody, and Szwarc, talented as he is, is definitely no substitute for Spielberg.

For instance, where in Jaws the pacing is one marked by a steadily increasing sense of tension that leads to the final showdown between Brody and the shark, Szwarc seems to linger on a slow and steady approach. Initially, this does cause some tension for the viewer, but when the film gets both bloody and silly, 75 minutes have already elapsed, and one has to fight the urge to look at one's watch or get up and walk around.

Szwarc also undermines the shock value of the great white's screen time by reversing Spielberg's technique of less is more. In the original, the viewer sees "Bruce" (the crew's nickname for the balky, hard-to-control mechanical shark) only three times and at well-chosen moments. Here, Szwarc shows the shark too many times, and by the film's less-than-inspiring finale, even a first-time movie viewer can tell that the man-eating fish is mechanical.

The film is also saddled with several unfortunate storytelling issues, such as the basic premise of another great white behaving very much like a serial killer off the Amity shore. (Perhaps this device also explains my personal objection to the "many teens in danger" plot point...)

In addition, Jaws 2 features one of the silliest can you top this sequences of all time, featuring the shark's attack on a floating helicopter. Granted, even Spielberg admits that the ending for his film was a bit tongue-in-cheek (or scuba tank-in-shark's mouth, as it were), but the notion of a white shark eating (or trying to eat) a helicopter is really asking too much of an audience.

If there are any good things to say about Jaws 2, then some credit has to go to Roy Scheider, who plays Brody with a proper sense of wanting to protect Amity (especially his two sons) mixed with the haunted air of a guy who lived through a nightmarish incident and lived to tell the tale. His sense of urgency is totally believable, even though the final showdown with the second shark is in turns both predictable and a bit silly.