Friday, September 16, 2016

Jaws 2 Review




What lurks underneath the water is still terrifying and the screams continue to ring through the air across Amity Island, but something is missing from Jaws 2, and it's more than just the name Steven Spielberg. The events that occur during this second great white death extravaganza carry with them a feeling of redundancy which makes it all the more noticeable how perfect it was to have Roy Scheider's Brody alongside Robert Shaw's Quint and Richard Dreyfuss's Hooper. The absence of compelling supporting players makes the building of tension and the execution of the horror essential to make this sequel worthy of a watch, and Jaws 2 does at least slightly succeed in this regard. The scenes in the water are gripping and unnerving, yet they achieve nothing more than in the moment thrills rather than lasting cinematic memories.

I read somewhere that Scheider was initially reluctant to sign on to doing this sequel, but you can't really sense a different approach from him personally throughout the film, a performance pretty much in lock step with what he brought to Jaws and his familiar face adds appeal to the picture. Unfortunately there just isn't much here for him to work with, and if anything this film serves as a reminder that the original didn't succeed solely because of an iconic musical score and a giant fucking shark. It's the quiet sequences between characters, the moments that feel safe enough to allow an audience to let its guard down even for just a few minutes, that are crucial to making us clench up when we get another sight of the fin lurking in the distance. Director Jeannot Szwarc and screenwriter Carl Gottlieb clearly understand this enough to attempt to embrace the notion, but the spaces between the scenes in which the blue water turns red feel like nothing more than recycled boring filler.



2/5


4 comments:

  1. Hm, it's been so long since I've seen the sequels to Jaws. I remember I liked the first two and not the last two. I guess I'll do a Jaws marathon after my Akira Kurosawa marathon.

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    1. Yeah that might be fun Cody. I hold the original in such high regard, Jaws 2 was just missing a lot of what made it so great.

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  2. I still enjoy this sequel. It's simple, but there are some effective scenes here. If John Hancock was allowed to finish what he started, I think it could have been an even better film. There is a lot of interesting stuff surrounding the making of this one. Either way, I still think it worked overall.

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    1. That's fair, and I agree, usually when directors are switched in this regard the end result is bad. This isn't a terrible movie, it just falls so short of what made Jaws so great.

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