Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

True confessions of a movie junkie: back when I was a teenager, I had an internship at a neighborhood newspaper. I was given a pass to go review Jaws: The Revenge and I was so excited about the prospect, I gave the movie a good review. Looking back, I am likely the only person in the world to have done so. Consider this post me righting a grievous wrong.

Most people who review Jaws The Revenge on their blogs nowadays seem to do so to prove they are intellectually superior to it. The problem is that proving you're intellectually superior to a movie this dumb is like proving you were born with a torso. Even someone with a zero IQ is intellectually superior to Jaws: The Revenge.

The movie starts with yet another Great White Shark invading the waters of Amity Island. It's Christmas time, so there's no swimmers which makes me wonder why the shark would even bother. Oh, that's right: because the Brody family still lives on Amity Island and youngest son Sean is a deputy. Deputy Sean is sent out on the water to move some driftwood and Mr. Whitey pops out of the water to say "Hello, my name is Sharkey Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!" He then eats Sean, an ignoble end to a character who was always kinda treated shoddily in this series and yet who somehow went from being 5 years old in 1975 to 30 just 12 years later.

Oldest son Michael (Lance Guest) convinces mom Ellen (Lorraine Gary, reprising her role from the first two films) to come and stay in Bermuda with him, his wife and his daughter. The weather's better and there's no sharks. She agrees, so Mr. Whitey decides to follow her to Bermuda because he has more Brody family members to kill, you see. Yes, the shark is actually exacting revenge on the family for the death of the first shark in the original movie. I promise you I did not make that up and I am quite sober. In the novelization, the shark is an instrument of vengeance for a voodoo witch doctor who is pissed at Michael. That almost makes sense, unlike what we actually get.

Ellen meets roguish pilot Hoagie--Michael Caine proving he was willing to do anything for money--and is having a good time unaware that Mr. Whitey has arrived. Michael and his partner Jake (Mario Van Peebles) are aware of Mr. Whitey since he's already tried taking a bite out of Michael. Rather than worry Mom, they decide to try to track the shark. Eventually Mr. Whitey tries taking a bite out of Mike's precocious daughter (Judith Barsi), so Ellen steals Michael's boat and goes out on the ocean to do something, but I'm not sure exactly what. I don't think the writers knew what she was supposed to do either. Certainly she didn't know what she was supposed to do. Michael, Hoagie, and Jake go to the rescue. Hoagie swims but stays dry, Jake falls into the shark's mouth and survives, and the shark eventually roars before exploding once it's impaled. How a shark roars then explodes upon being impaled, I don't know.

If I've made the movie sound more entertaining than it actually is, I apologize. It's a bad habit of mine and I really should break it.

The problems with this movie would likely fill a book. For one, it decides to ignore Jaws 3-D (1983). As bad as Jaws 3-D is--and I fully recognize it's a terrible movie even though I love it--Jaws 3-D almost makes some sort of sense. This film is pure nonsense. On top of that, the acting is bad, the dialogue worse, and the shark looks ridiculous. There isn't even a good kill count in the film as only three people get attacked and one of them survives for reasons that make no sense. There's also an awful lot of time spent on the romance between Ellen and Hoagie. That's not necessarily a bad thing since it's actually a portrayal of an older couple falling in love, something surprising for a movie of this genre. However, there's also a lot of time spent on Michael being jealous and suspicious of Hoagie that drags the thing down.  In short, the main plot is stupid and the subplots are boring. Sure, there's some unintentional laughs in the thing but there's an equally large number of cringe-inducing scenes.

Exactly why I liked this film at 16 is something I'll never know. Especially when I had the common sense to hate equally bad movies. Maybe just because it was a Jaws movie and the original is one of my all time favorite movies. At any rate, if you read my review in 1987, I apologize. And for those of you thinking this thing can't possibly be as bad as I'm now saying...it is.