B to Z Movies/Franchises: Jaws. Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

First thing I have to say is that I don't understand how this movie got made. I know Jaws 3 did pretty well, despite its enormous flaws, but did the series still have enough clout by this point for the studio to greenlight another sequel? It's truly mind-boggling. Anyway, this film is often regarded as the true nadir of the series and is considered one of the worst movies ever made. I can understand why people feel that way. This film really is bad but, call me crazy, I enjoy it a lot more than the previous movie in the series. If I have choice on watching either of the films after Jaws 2, I'll always go with this one. It's hard for me to explain but I'll try my best. Before I begin, I must say that this one is special to me because it was the first DVD I ever watched. When I got my first player for my sixteenth birthday, this was one of the four DVDs I got with it and it was the first one I watched so go figure.

This movie basically ignores the events of its predecessor, creating a new continuity for its returning main characters. It begins with Sean Brody living on Amity with his mother Ellen, whose husband Martin has died some time before from a heart attack. A few nights before Christmas, Sean, who is the deputy sheriff on the island, is sent out to remove a piece of driftwood from a buoy. While doing so, he's attacked and killed by a large great white shark. Ellen is now convinced that the shark killed Sean on purpose and is now stalking her family for what happened to the sharks in the previous films. To try to take her mind off things, she travels with her other son, Mike, and his wife and daughter to the Bahamas to spend Christmas there. While there, Ellen meets up with a carefree airplane pilot named Hoagie, who helps take her mind off the tragedy. However at the same time, Mike and his friend Jake, who work as marine biologists, encounter the great white shark, who has apparently followed Ellen to the Bahamas to kill her and her family. While trying to study the shark, Mike begins to think his mother's fears may have come true.

Okay, I must say that I do agree with those who complain that giving the shark a motive is ridiculous because it is. The sharks in the previous films were just being the big predators of the sea that they were, nothing personal. Giving the shark a motive goes into supernatural territory which cheapens the impact of the first film. Ironically, the seeds of this movie were sewn in a brief exchange in Jaws 2, where Brody is thinking that the shark in that film could be prowling around Amity for what happened to the original one and the biologist tells him, "Sharks don't take things personally, Mr. Brody." Granted, Brody's thinking in that film was no doubt motivated by fear but here, it's clear from the get-go that this shark does have a method to its madness. So, yes, I do agree with that complaint.

The director this time is Joseph Sargent, who worked with Lorraine Gary before on a TV, which is no doubt how he got her to do this film. That's one thing this movie had going for it, that its director had actual directing experience, unlike Joe Alves in Jaws 3. Unfortunately, that doesn't help the film overcome its shortcomings. Sargent is pretty good at directing the character moments in this film but when it comes to the suspense and action scenes involving the shark and underwater photography, he has no idea what he's doing.

I think some of the acting is good in this film whereas others aren't so much. Lorraine Gary reprises her role as Ellen Brody, making her the veteran of this series. The take on Ellen in this film is interesting, with her being as paranoid about sharks as her husband became in the second film. Sometimes it does work, like when she's worried about Mike having a job that has him in the ocean a lot and as she starts to lighten up when she strikes up a romance with Hoagie. However, there are other times where it comes across as melodramatic. Her rant in the kitchen after Sean's death when she is telling Mike to quit his job comes across as silly. During Sean's funeral, she's remembering the moment in the original when Sean imitated his father at the dinner table and she smiles, making some people at the funeral wonder why she's doing so. At another point, she tries to pick her granddaughter up but has to give her back to her daughter-in-law because she's too weak and starts crying for some reason. I'm guessing it has something to do with when Sean was a little kid but it just comes across as random. Also, as anyone who's seen the film knows, she has flashbacks to scenes from the first film and to stuff earlier in this one. One has to wonder how she remembers stuff that she didn't witness in the first place. Granted, she was there for the aforementioned scene in the original and the scene in this film where her granddaughter is attacked by the shark while on a banana boat but how does she remember her son getting killed when she didn't actually see it and how her husband killed the original shark? You could rationalize that Martin probably told her about what happened during the final battle in the original but the stuff with Sean? No, that's a goof.

Lance Guest plays Mike Brody and I thought he did a pretty decent job. He may not win any Academy Awards but I thought he came across as likable, particularly in the scenes with his mother, his family, and Jake. They could have done more with the notion that his mother's fears about the shark to creep in on him when he encounters it but it doesn't go anywhere. Still, I thought Guest was passable. And no discussion about Jaws: The Revenge would be complete without talking about Mario Van Peebles' infamous role as Jake, Mike's Jamaican buddy. I'll just come out and say it: I love Jake. Yes, I know Van Peebles is playing him as a typical stereotype but I always found him to be funny and likable. The scenes where he and Mike are ribbing each other does come across as two good friends to me. But I do agree that the bit at the end with him showing up after he was clearly eaten by the shark is bull. Did the shark swallow him whole and he came up after it was killed or what? If it just spat him out, where was he during the rest of the final battle? No excuse. Even Mike when he helps him says what we're all thinking: "The hell are you doing alive?"

Michael Caine plays Hoagie, the charismatic pilot. You really have to wonder what Caine is doing in this film. True, it was a sequel to the classic Jaws but I think if he'd seen the others, he would have known that this probably wasn't going to be a film he would be proud of. Caine claims to this day that he's never seen the film and the main reason he did it was for the money so he could build a house. He also was unable to personally collect an Oscar he received for another movie because he was filming this but he seems to look back on it with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. As for his performance, I liked the way Caine played Hoagie. As with Van Peebles as Jake, Hoagie is a likable, charming, easy-going guy with a good sense of humor, even when he's about to get eaten by the shark: "Oh, shit!" I do like that he survived, although how he swam from his destroyed plane to the ship and barely even got wet is something I don't understand at all.

Karen Young plays Mike's wife, Carla, who's an artist that creates sculptures for the island tourism trade. Not much to say about her. She's sexy and is a caring enough wife and daughter-in-law to Ellen, as well as gives Mike hell when she realizes that he knew about the shark all along and didn't tell them. Judith Barsi plays Mike and Carla's young daughter, Thea. Not much to say about her other than she's cute and really didn't annoy me. One dumb thing she does is what she says to someone as soon as she and her parents visit Ellen after Sean's death: "Uncle Sean is dead, you know. Will he come back?" Carla says, "We'll talk about that later, Thea." I think you should have talked to her about that earlier! (On a sad side-note, I found out that Barsi was murdered, along with her mother, by her insane father a year after this movie was made, which is really tragic.) Finally, Mitchell Anderson plays the brief role of Sean Brody. The one thing I have to say about him is that I do think his death is disturbing. The way the shark first bites his left arm off before killing is bad enough but the way he's screaming and that there are kids singing The First Noel nearby is quite disturbing to me. I actually saw this scene when I was a kid on TV and it really messed me up.

This film does suffer from some melodramatic and corny moments. There's a scene that recreates the dinner table from the original with Sean imitating Martin, only this time done with Mike and Thea. It is kind of touching but may succeed only in making viewers wish they were watching the original Jaws. Another weird part is the first scene between Mike and Jake. Jake gets really angry at him for taking off to Amity and leaving him with the workload, causing Mike to yell at him. Jake then very calmly says, "I'm sorry about your brother, man." That was a sporadic change of emotion! The most laughable melodramatic moment is when Jake "supposedly" gets killed by the shark. The entire moment is in slow-motion with no sound except the music and when the shark disappears beneath the water, Mike yells, "JAAAAAAAAAAKE!", which even echoes. I know it's supposed to be tragic but it comes off as just plain silly and overplayed. Plus, the guy's not dead so it was pointless.

The shark looks the worst in this film. It's so fake and lifeless that it's not even funny. As much as I bashed the shark in Jaws 3, I bought that one more than this (and that should tell you something). It looks like one of those shark toys I used to play with in the bathtub when I was a kid. When Jake first encounters the shark while operating the mini-sub, it literally seems as if the damn thing just floated instead of swam towards him and bumped him. Even when the shark is chewing on the side of the boat or coming up to attack people it looks fake. There are scenes where it's so far out of the water that it has to be balancing its tail on something right below the surface! A scene where the shark chases Mike while he's scuba-diving is particularly silly looking because Mike takes cover inside a shipwreck on the ocean floor and the shark still manages to squeeze inside of it. The sight of that big-ass shark swimming down corridors in that wreck (barely doing so, by the way) just makes me smirk. Oh, and the shark roars as well. During the finale, Mike and Jake put an electric device in its mouth that Mike uses to shock it to death. When he does so, the shark actually sticks its head out of the water and makes a T-Rex style roar. I'm pretty sure I've heard that roar in other movies, including the original Jaws after the shark is destroyed.

The most baffling part is the shark's death. As Mike continues to electrocute the shark, Ellen steers the boat right into it. When the bowsprit jabs into the shark, it blows up for some reason. To this day, I'm sure many wonder what the hell that was about. Some try to rationalize that the shark exploded because the bowsprit hit the device Jake put down its throat but I'm pretty sure that thing wasn't a bomb. From what I can gather, the ending was originally shot to depict the shark getting gutted by the boat and tearing it apart with its contortions, with Mike, Ellen, and Hoagie having to jump off the boat to avoid getting killed. Test audiences apparently didn't like this ending for some reason and it was reedited to produce the confusing ending that exists now. Interestingly, I think I've seen that original ending on some TV airings of the movie but the explosion is the one on the DVD. Also, right before the boat rams the shark, we get a sepia-toned shot of Roy Scheider saying, "Smile, you son of a bitch!" from the original (in Ellen's mind) and the shot of the decapitated shark sinking to the bottom afterward is from the original as well.

My favorite thing about Jaws: The Revenge is the music. Michael Small did the music here and it's pretty good. My favorite part of the score is the main title, which is a fairly tense piece of music with bits of John Williams' score for the original thrown in for good measure. It makes the opening title sequence (which is presumably from the shark's point of view as it prowls around Amity harbor) quite thrilling. I also like the new twist on the infamous shark theme that Small creates for this movie and the rest of the score is pretty good as well. This may be why I actually like the film despite its faults because the music makes it feel better than it really is. The only complaint I have with the music is that, as with the other two sequels, they use the shark theme too much and it gives away the shark's presence, ruining what suspense could have been created from it.

Since I've spent the majority of this review picking on the flaws of Jaws: The Revenge, you're probably wondering why I said I like it. Like I said, it's hard to explain. It could be because I saw it when I was young and I thought it was great then. Or could it be that I get enjoyment out of its flaws, being a lover of bad movies, and the fact that, despite those flaws, it feels like Sargent's heart was in the right place for the most part. I really don't know. All I do know is that I can watch this a whole lot more than Jaws 3, even though this is technically a worse film. But, a lot of other people didn't feel that way. This movie bombed, putting the final nail in the coffin for the franchise. Even though I do get enjoyment out of this, I am glad it was the last one because any further sequels would have probably been even more unspeakably bad than this film every dreamed of being.