Movie 157: Jaws 2

A few years after the events of the first film, a couple of divers then a water skier and the boat driver are killed. Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider) suspects that it’s a shark, particularly when an Orca washes up with big bites out of it. No one else believes him though, and when he spazes out on the beach he’s fired…

Probably some spoilers there. This is no where near as good as the original, but its not as terrible as it could have been.

Scheider’s Brody is a bit of a Captain Ahab character here. If Ahab had killed the white whale and they kept seeing white whales everywhere. He is right though. The problem is that we KNOW he’s right. We’ve seen the shark, we’ve seen it killing. If we hadn’t that might have improved some of the film. If we first see the shark an hour in and everything up to that was hinted but ambiguous it would have been very brave and clever. Of course we KNOW there’s a shark, or that there will be one, but did it do the stuff that the Sheriff thinks it did?

But they didn’t do that.

Jaws was the first block buster, and it shows a bit here that studios had realised they could get teen bums in seats. The main characters here really are the teenage Mike and his friends. It doesn’t really work as well. Particularly as Mike and all the guys seems to think the slightly puffy faced, weird nosed girl is incredibly hot.

What made the original work was the interplay between Quint, Scheider and Drefus. Only one of the three is present in this movie. Honestly, the star of the first one isn’t Bruce the shark. It’s the other pain in the arse from the set. Robert Shaw’s Quint is the most memorable character, a grizzled old bad ass. By setting out to net the kids the lost the heart of what made the first film work.

It’s not the worst sequel ever but it doesn’t sit in that rare category of second films that are better than the first. It happens more often than you’d think actually, particularly in the comic book genre. Tellingly it’s the last film to have Sheriff Brody in it which proves that the franchise probably had as many legs as the shark. Some film don’t need a sequel, Jaws was one of them. But if they had to make one, they could have done worse than this.

Oh, and Brody is the Macgyver of shark murder. You’ll see what I mean

Next up: Outpost. Not the Sean Connery sci fi flick.