Review of Jaws: The Revenge (1987) by John W — 24 Mar 2010

"Come and get me, you son of a bitch!".

The term "bad movies" covers a lot of ground. There are simple bad movies, but then there are the BAD movies - the kind with terrible concepts made worse by inept screenwriting and woeful filmmaking in virtually every regard. These are the movies that convince you everyone involved was either drunk, stoned or sleepwalking during every day of their participation in the production. Jaws the Revenge - the third sequel to Steven Spielberg's Jaws - is a great example of this type of bad film. By this point in the Jaws series, the concept of quality completely flew over the studio's head - it became a simple matter of milking the cash-cow (cash-shark?) for all that it was worth. The film is not even titled Jaws 4 because all references to Jaws 3 are avoided, and it tells an alternative story about different versions of the Brody offspring. Writing a review for Jaws the Revenge would seem unnecessary since you pretty much know it sucks (and boy does it ever!), but there's too much fun to be had in ripping this dreck to shreds...

Roy Scheider, who played Martin Brody in the first two films, said "No, and get off my land!" when asked to participate in Jaws 3, and he was probably pretty grateful for his decision. When Jaws the Revenge entered pre-production, the money-leeching producers wanted to shift the series back to Amity Island where the first two instalments played out. Once again, Roy Scheider laughed in their faces. Thus, someone at Universal dug up Lorraine Gary's phone number and persuaded the actress to reprise her role as Ellen Brody. It's no coincidence that Gary has never acted since.

In the film, Ellen is now a widow. Apparently her husband died of a heart attack that was brought on by fear of the shark, which does not make a great deal of sense. What, did the shark jump out of a cupboard and scare him? Moving on... The story opens at Christmastime, as one of Ellen's sons (Anderson) is killed by a giant Great White Shark that arrives at Amity. Judging by this attack, Ellen deduces that a shark is hunting the Brody family because it's a descendant of the sharks from the previous Jaws movies, and wants revenge. This makes sense - a fish with a brain the size of a large apple can telepathically find out who has been killing its relatives, and wants vengeance. Perfectly logical. As for the rest of the movie? The characters head to the Bahamas, the shark hunts the Brody family, and everyone fights for survival.

Let's break this down... Ellen believes this shark is hunting her family, so she leaves Amity. Isn't that a bit of a severe diversionary tactic to avoid a fish? Wouldn't an apartment building suffice? Couldn't the mother just avoid going in the water? But the characters are stupid and the people who made the movie are stupid, so Ellen goes to the Bahamas. Of course, being a small island surrounded by water, the Bahamas is an ideal place to avoid a fish... For crying out loud, why doesn't she just move to Antarctica if she's so serious? It's unlikely that a fin will pop up through the ice while she's sitting on a dog sled. So anyway, Ellen heads to the Bahamas. Somehow, the shark not only finds out about her travel plans, but the shark manages to swim to the Bahamas and arrive before Ellen's jet does. Fishes are officially the fastest mode of transport, according to this fucking retarded motion picture. It also asserts that Great White Sharks can survive in the warm waters of the Bahamas, when it's a bona fide fact that they cannot. But the film's stupidity does not stop there... Ellen is also haunted by flashbacks to events which she did not witness, and events that, in some cases, no survivors witnessed.

Why a well-regarded director like Joseph Sargent (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) signed on to direct this shit is beyond my mental parameters. Even more baffling is that Sargent's direction is awful, and the production values are so cheap it's downright insulting. The film was produced on a budget of $23 million (whereas Jaws was apparently made for about $8.5 million). Where did it all go? They must've used $1 million for the actors, some money for boat rental and a few bucks on the shark, then took the rest of the cash and ran. One would logically expect some realistic shark models since this is Part 4 of the series, but alas, all we get is an extremely obvious, false-looking, plastic-coated toy handled by cranes and animatronics. A yellow post-it note with the word "SHARK" written on it with some squiggly water lines would be more convincing than the cheap submerged Halloween costume on display throughout this joke of a movie. It's even possible to actually see the controls of the shark in several shots during the film. Meanwhile, the shark movement is robotic and laughably unrealistic. And don't even bother thinking about the actors - they're all crap. Even Michael Caine looks unfocused, though he does deliver the only worthwhile lines of dialogue. Tragically, Caine's shooting obligations on this film prevented him from accepting an Oscar!

Eventually, the proceedings of Jaws the Revenge culminate for an ending that involves the shark exploding for no apparent reason (after roaring while riding on its tail on the surface of the water...and its roar sounds like it's an elephant shark), and the cast floating in a water tank in front of a blatantly obvious painted backdrop that even has water lapping up against it. The climactic scene is so incompetently shot and handled that and a viewer will be left thinking "WTF?!". Not only this, but the shots of the shark exploding are literally so cheap that the filmmakers used a toy shark and a boat in a bathtub. Seriously, watch the scene in slow motion. It's no wonder that the film earned a Razzie for Worst Visual Effects. Jaws the Revenge was additionally nominated for Worst Actor, Worst Actress, Worst Supporting Actor, Worst Director, Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay. To state the bloody obvious, this is an appalling film that's only watchable due to how hilariously bad the shark attack scenes are. At least you can laugh at it.