Review of Jaws 3-D (1983) by Cal ( — 23 Mar 2010

"Overman was killed inside the park. The baby was caught inside the park. It's mother is inside the park.".

With the (understandable) departure of virtually everyone involved with the first two Jaws movies, it was up to a new creative team to conceive of something new to attract audiences to the cinema for another sequel to Steven Spielberg's 1975 masterpiece. During the early '80s, the concept of 3-D films was revived, and it became all the rage in Hollywood (remember those blue and red cellophane glasses?). Thus, the decision was made to use the gimmick for Jaws 3, which was in turn entitled Jaws 3-D. Problem is, Jaws 3 exists as a prime example of everything that's wrong with sequels. It fits the bill on every count - it's unnecessary (another film about a killer Great White Shark which involves the same family?), gimmicky (3-D, anyone?), and looks cheaper than its predecessors. Gone are the competent production values, decent acting and solid screenwriting. What remains is an empty carcass.

Since both Steven Spielberg and Richard Dreyfuss bolted after the first film, and Roy Scheider had the good sense to call it quits after the sequel, Jaws 3 introduces new actors and a smattering of new characters. There's a new locale as well - Sea World in an undisclosed Florida location. However, it's unthinkable that the Jaws series could continue without any returning faces, so the Brody offspring, Michael (Quaid) and Sean (Putch), take centre stage. Michael works at Sea World with his girlfriend (Armstrong), but - shock horror - a 35-foot man-eating Great White Shark shows up and begins eating people. Personally, I'd have given the shark a knife and fork.

The original Jaws worked due to its primal simplicity. A shark showed up in a populated area, began munching on the population, and a trio of men set out to kill it. In the first sequel, the incredible coincidence of another shark in the same location terrorising the same community is hard to swallow. For Jaws 3, the coincidence that the Brody offspring are still terrorised by a huge, monster-sized shark - even after relocating to Florida - is impossible to swallow. Astonishingly, the screenplay was penned by original Jaws scenarist Carl Gottlieb and respected novelist Richard Matheson. It's a shame both were either asleep or drunk while writing the script, as the dialogue is flat and the pacing is appalling. Since Jaws 3, Dennis Quaid has featured in a plethora of bad movies, but even he seems keen to scrub this title from his résumé - when asked about the film many years later, he reportedly replied "I was in Jaws what? Aw, I was drunk".

Another key factor in the success of the original Jaws was the vision and talent of director Steven Spielberg. Jaws 2 director Jeannot Szwarc did not prove as talented as Spielberg, but at least he was able to construct a workable film and conjure up a certain degree of tension. When Jaws 3 rolled around, the producers made the baffling decision to hand the reigns to Joe Alves, who served as production designer and second unit director for the first two films. Having no prior directorial experience before (or since) in his career, Alves was clearly in over his head when it came to the subtleties of building tension, as the suspense of the shark attacks here is replaced by cheap attempts at shock and gore. Jaws 3 also severely lacks style, as scenes lumber by with no visual panache or genuinely interesting moments. The only unique developments in the visual style come from the way some shots are presented. This is because Jaws 3 was designed as a 3-D movie, so there are several instances of things shooting towards the camera. These moments may look impressive on a giant theatre screen with 3-D glasses on, but as a regular 2-D movie most of them seem like downright bad filmmaking (note the very thick black lines around the 3-D objects).

The special effects are a constant source of amusement, with incredibly fake mechanical sharks and awful computer representations of them. It's baffling, but with each subsequent film, the shark looks faker than ever before. Shouldn't the effects be increasing rather than declining? Shouldn't the always-improving cinematic technology be rendering more believable sharks? The 35-foot Great White in this film never looks real - it looks stiffer than concrete, it's incredibly slow, and appears to have a fucking tongue. In addition, the shark growls at times. Even more hysterical is the shark's amazing ability to swim in reverse or swim on the spot!

As with the first two Jaws movies, Jaws 3 does feature real footage of sharks, but the technique is very ineffective here. The footage is very obviously sped up most of the time, and the placement of footage occasionally makes no sense (daytime footage of a Great White is used during a night-time sequence...). Heck, at one stage the filmmakers run out of Great White Shark footage, so they use footage of a fucking catfish. And I'm not making this up! Compounding all the awfulness, John Williams didn't score the film (bits and pieces of the classic theme are used, though). He was replaced by a television veteran named Alan Parker, whose inexperience with feature films is painfully obvious as the music never evokes a sense of terror, dread or suspense. In fact, the entire enterprise looks, feels and sounds like a cheap TV movie.

Somehow, though, Jaws 3 manages to be strangely compelling in its terribleness. While it's intoxicatingly bad, at least you can laugh at it along the way. Cheesy acting, amazingly risible dialogue, bad special effects, terrible pacing... Jaws 3 represents the whole bad movie package. It will never be mistaken for a decent (or even a half-decent) film, but it's fun to watch with your friends after having a few beers. It's even more fun to ridicule. It's not worth paying a cent to see it, but if it's on television one night and your mates are in attendance...load up on the booze and enjoy. You're guaranteed to laugh. At least it's a fun bad movie...it gets points for that.