Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Great movies don’t always make for great sequels, and the Jaws series is proof of that. How did each installment just get worse? I mean Jaws 2 is ok, not bad, not great, Jaws 3D is so bad its funny, and then there’s Jaws 4. I’ve heard for a while that Jaws The Revenge aka Jaws 4 was one of the worst movies ever, so I fired up HBOMax and checked it out.
Jaws: The Revenge is about Chief Brody’s widow believing her family is being picked off one by one by another shark in search of revenge. Think about that. Think about how completely idiotic that sounds. A shark, an animal is capable of revenge, not only that but capable of traveling hundreds of miles in search of a certain family to exact revenge on. I think what makes this so bad is the premise, honestly its so dumb, how did that get green lit? Is the rest of the movie bad? Not really. It is your run of the mill shark movie, nothing great nothing horrible.
The acting isn’t that bad, hell Michael Caine is in it! Mario Van Peebles is fun as Jake, he’s witty and likeable but his performance isn’t strong. Lorraine Gary plays Ellen Brody the widow, she kind of hams it up at times but she puts in a solid effort. Again I’m not sure what makes this “one of the worst movies ever”. Along with the decent acting comes the decent special effects, all but the stabbed shark at the end which looked bad. The shark doesn’t look crazy good all in all, but I’ve seen worse. Its no Jaws but its definitely not the Adam West Batman movie. There is enough blood and attacks to keep you interested, I suppose. What do I think is the worst part? Aside from the premise, I think the shark roaring is laughably stupid. Sharks are incapable of making a sound, let alone roaring like a dinosaur. That made me laugh though, so again…could be worse right? The ending? It is pretty bad, so many people say it is the worst ever. The shark gets impaled by the bow of the sail boat, just like the LJN Nintendo game.
Why is this movie so panned? The premise is the only thing I can think of and carrying the burden of the Jaws name hurts it. If it was called Shark Revenge or something, no one would talk about it. It is rather underwhelming, and blah but that’s it, just blah. I’d have a stronger opinion on it if there was anything that swayed me either way. It isn’t the worst movie I’ve seen, hell its not even the worst shark movie I’ve ever seen. I had a hard time even finding much to say about it in this review. All in all I give this movie a D+, yeah it’s dumb but it could be much worse.
