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Jaws II (1978): We're Gonna Need an Even Bigger Boat

 




Many months back I picked up a DVD with all the Jaws sequels for pretty cheap in a Family Dollar DVD rack, and because I’m a completionist I went ahead and picked up a used copy of the original Jaws on BluRay which I watched pretty quickly after I got it and enjoyed just as much if not even more than every previous viewing, it is almost a perfect film for what it is trying to accomplish, very few notes. Welp, it was finally time that I got around to justifying the original purchase that started it all. I watched Jaws 2.

The most obvious changes for this sequel is that they apparently saw all the tickets they sold to teenagers for the original and thought “Hey, we’ll sell even more if we just put a bunch of random teenagers in the center of the film” without much though to giving them any real personality beyond a few stereotypical, throwaway lines in the early parts of the film and the fact that Sheriff Brody is now a very lonely man. Whereas so much of what made the original great is the chemistry and bond that forms over the course of the movie of three modern Ahabs seeking the grand prize, Roy Scheider is forced to spend so much of this film alone with nobody to banter with but his wife and seemingly permanently flustered deputy and spending huge chunks of the film just alone on a boat. Both of these are fundamentally bad calls, and the movie suffers for them. They also didn’t learn the lesson not to show too much of the shark, because they show him out of the water frequently and he looks like absolute dogshit, so much worse than the brief glimpses we get in the first film.

However, Roy Scheider gives the role his all again, and his natural charisma lights up the screen every time he is on it, he has such a natural delivery and ability to float in and out of light and serious whenever the seen calls for. The shark does some really dumb things that I saved for the good section of this review because of how entertaining they are like getting caught on fire and causing an explosion, destroying countless boats with no effort, and SINKING A HELICOPTER. It is so ridiculously overpowered compared to the shark in the first, that you can’t but enjoy it. Also, the film does feel more intimate, a father looking after his kids and their friends stranded on the water and the kids banding together to try and survive. It isn’t the great hunt but really a true enough horror situation complete with vulnerable teens. The film doesn’t look like a Spielberg film, but the direction is always solid and some of the beach and water shots look nearly as handsome as the first.

It isn’t a great movie by any means and pales as hard as you can in comparison to the original, but it is watchable pulp with a bigger body count than the first and bigger calamities. I do not regret that I own a copy I might pull off the shelf every few years as a chaser to the OG. Any chance I get to have more Roy Scheider in my life is positive.

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