Title:Jaws 3 By: Joe Alves Released by: MCA Universal Released on: Rating (out of 10): 4 Date: 12/13/2001
Dennis Quaid, Lou Gossett Jr., Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkindale
Joe Alves' Jaws 3
Sequels—we all hate them. They’re the bane of a serious film fan’s existence, a pointed reminder that Hollywood is not only more concerned with money than art, but also a testament to just how truly devoid of good ideas Tinseltown really is. Why create something new when you can just rehash last year’s big hit and run it into the ground? Sure, we can all name a few sequels that are good—but by and large, they're often just weak attempts to cash in on a proven commodity.
As far as sequels go, Jaws 3 stands as a prime example of everything that’s wrong with them. They’re often unnecessary (do we really need a third film about a killer great white shark? Could it possibly improve upon the first film, or even the second?), gimmicky (3-D anyone?), and produced on a lower budget with lower production values than their predecessors. Jaws 3 fits the bill on each of these points—so why is it that it’s so cheesy that it’s actually almost good?
Make no mistake about it, Jaws 3 is best described as ‘woefully inept’. It’s a monument to bad filmmaking and corrupted creative vision, a shining example of how not to make a film. Everything from the melodramatic performances, the awful writing, the absurd special FX, the contemptible score music, and the bland direction support my point. And yet, somehow, it manages to be oddly compelling in its awfulness—watching Jaws 3 is like gawking at an auto accident. Taste and decorum tell you you’re not supposed to look, but you can’t help it anyway. It’s like a swirling vortex of mediocrity that sucks you in no matter how much you might resist, yet it’s so intoxicatingly banal that you’d be powerless to fight against it—but you won’t want to anyway.
Since Spielberg and Dreyfuss bolted after the first film, and Roy Scheider had the good sense to call it quits after the sequel, Jaws 3 is forced to bring new actors to the story. Since we have new actors, we might as well have a new locale as well—so, gone is Amity Island, replaced by an undisclosed Florida location which is also home the Sea World.
This fictional Sea World (because the real Sea World in Florida is in Orlando, which is a landlocked city) is situated in a lagoon that connects to the ocean. Apparently park designers thought this was a good idea, and that they could keep out any unwanted animal visitors by installing a mechanized gate system—oh, how wrong they were…
Anyway, as our story opens (a story written by a committee that included both Carl Gottlieb, who wrote much of the original film’s script, and legendary author Richard Matheson) Sea World is preparing for its grand opening. Head honcho Calvin Bouchard (Lou Gossett Jr.) is overseeing everything and playing up to the press.
Meanwhile, Mike Brody (Dennis Quaid), son of Chief Brody of Amity Island fame, is working to make sure that all the architectural stuff is up to snuff. When not on the job, Brody spends time with his girlfriend Kathryn (Bess Armstrong), who’s a marine biologist or something.
Rounding out the ensemble cast (it’s amazing how many people have major roles in this film) is John Putch (who plays Sean Brody—the younger Brody brother who’s also afraid of the water), Simon MacCorkindale as maverick photographer and all around stud Philip FitzRoyce, and Lea Thompson who gets to be Sean’s love interest.
Once the human chum has been assembled, we can finally set things in motion. Basically, a 35-foot great white shark gets into the park, eats people, and wreaks havoc. Sure, there’s something about a baby great white shark (our large shark is its mother) and filtration pumps and whatnot, but the script is so nonsensical that it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that a large shark is in the park—and she’s not happy.
Oh, where to begin…
When released theatrically way back in 1983, the big selling point of this film was that it would be released in 3-D. Someone in Hollywood convinced everyone that 3-D was the next big thing in film, so after the mild success of the third Friday the 13th film (shot in 3-D, naturally), we were treated to mini-renaissance of 3-D films. Fortunately, most of these films sucked, and by 1984, no one wanted to make 3-D movies anymore. Because the film was conceived for the 3-D format, that means it’s filled with cheesy shots that serve no purpose other than to highlight the fact that you’re watching a 3-D film. The downside to this approach is that film is only offered in standard 2-D on VHS and DVD, so these shots look even more corny.
Even more goofy than the 2-D shots of a gutted fish, a mechanized eel, a dismembered human arm, or the shark swimming toward the camera are the FX shots themselves. I’m not sure how it happened, but with each subsequent film, Bruce the shark looks more fake than ever before. Shouldn’t this be going in the opposite direction? Shouldn’t new technology make the shark look better? The shark in this film never looks good—it’s stiffer than concrete (notice how it swims without the tail moving half the time), it’s slow, and worst of all, it’s got what appears to be a tongue! The FX designers apparently tried to imitate the great white’s distendable jaws as well, and while it was a nice idea, the execution simply makes the shark look like it has disconnected teeth.
If the shoddy modeling weren’t enough, let’s take a minute and talk about the physiology problems with the beast. The great white shark is an apex predator—it is and always has been one of the most feared predators on Earth. While they can grow to more than 20 feet in length, a 10 foot great white, in the same water as you, would be more than enough to terrify anyone. But rather than just go with the fact that the great white is a fearsome and terrifying creature in its own right, Jaws 3 has to take the old ‘bigger is better’ maxim and run with it. The 35-foot shark is just insanely implausible—it’s like nuking a fly, really. I wouldn’t mind, though—if the shark at least looked decent and behaved like a real shark…but it doesn’t.
Aside from the aforementioned tongue-like object in its mouth, this shark also possesses the abilty to growl! That’s right, this shark growls while attacking underwater. Call National Geographic, ‘cause this is a major scientific discovery. But wait, there’s more! This shark doesn’t so much attack stuff as it bludgeons it to death with its face. When the shark attacks the underwater tubes, it’s not an attack, it’s more like the charge of a battering ram. Even more hysterical is that this shark possesses the ability to swim in reverse!
Oh, but enough picking on the shark—let’s pick on the people too, shall we? One wonders how exactly the producers lured the cast into appearing in this film. Gossett had won an Oscar, for crying out loud. Armstrong and Quaid are decent enough, and Lea Thompson’s okay too. Yet all of them read this script and signed on to the production. Apparently they all have a great sense of humor or something. Quaid and Gossett at least seem as though they realize what a mess they’re in and try to ham it up a little. One could make the same point for MacCorkindale, but I think he was just being himself. Thompson and Armstrong are so earnest, though, that one can only believe that no one ever showed them the dailies. This earnestness brings about the some really hilarious and cheesy dialogue, particularly when Armstrong figures out that the shark must be 35-feet long based on the bite radius on a corpse. The mortified look on her face is just priceless.
The extras are a hoot too—they’re all a bunch of redneck hicks, to be honest. I’m surprised they didn’t cue a country music song on the soundtrack each and every time one of these people got a line.
Speaking of the soundtrack, it’s a bland and overly melodramatic affair. How can something be both bland and melodramatic? I’m not sure either, but trust me when I say the music here achieves the impossible. Even John Williams’ classic Jaws theme can’t save this mess.
Joe Alves directed the film, and I do feel sorry for him in a way. Alves was a production designer on the original film (in fact, he was an integral part of getting the original mechanical shark made) and deserved better than this. The film is very bland visually (hard to believe considering a production designer was directing), filled with overly blue water sequences that are often too murky to be even remotely appealing. Everything else looks sort of washed out and very traditional—there’s none of Spielberg’s panache in the direction here, nor is there any of the inventiveness that was inherent in Jeannot Szwarc’s work on the sequel. Frankly, this could be a made-for-TV movie.
Still, this is a killer shark film, so one should at least be able to hope for some gore, right? Unfortunately, Jaws 3 features very few shark attacks, and most of them are kept off-screen. The film does manage one good sequence though—MacCorkindale gets chomped near the climax and the scene is shot from inside the shark’s mouth—complete with crunching bones on the foley track intermingled with MaCorkindale’s underwater screams. Too bad this is also the scene where you can see the shark's tongue, too.
Oh yeah, another guy gets it pretty good at the climax. Can't forget that.
All of that leads up to a super-implausible and cheesy ending that sort of attempts to mirror the ending of Spielberg’s original. However, like everything else here, it falls well short of the mark it was aiming for.
After reading this review, it must sound like Jaws 3 really sucks—and believe me, it does. Yet, there’s something in the film’s intangibles that make it transcend mere mediocrity and transforms this abomination into something that’s almost fun despite the ineptitude that colors ever facet of the production. Jaws 3 is a bad film, filled with shoddy writing, garbage FX work, bad acting, and low production values. Yet, it still somehow manages to rise above its mediocre origins and become something special—a film so bad that it’s good. Jaws 3 will never be mistaken for a great film, but it’s one of those movies that’s fun to watch with your friends after having a few drinks. It’s even more fun to ridicule. I wouldn’t pay a penny to see it, but if you stumble across it on cable, give it a look. You’re guaranteed to laugh.
