Jaws 3

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkindale, Louis Gossett, Jr., John Putch, Lea Thompson
Directed by: Joe Alves
Rating: PG
Thriller
1983

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A great white shark accidentally swims into the park, and causes all kinds of problems. Mike Brody (Dennis Quaid) tries to save lives.

Review:

Tim: After the excellent Jaws and the good-but-not-great Jaws 2, it's probably no surprise that the third film was the one that finally jumped the shark (haha). This film is so absurd. It is easily the worst film in the franchise to date, the drop in quality is pretty staggering. There's so much wrong with this film that I almost don't know where to begin.

The movie is set in a different location- Sea World theme park in Florida. I suppose this change works, but I miss the quaint little town of Amity. Our hero is Mike Brody, the son of police chief Brody from the first two films. I understand using the same character for continuity purposes, but how likely is it that a boy living in a small New England town survives two great white shark encounters, moves to Florida, where he again encounters a great white shark killing people? The coincidence would be uncanny. They should have just created a new character and let the Brodys go.

The film is structured similarly to the other film, where we have a number of tension scenes and isolated shark attacks before the big shark finally gets mad and goes crazy, killing as many people as it can. The humans have to mount a furious attack to the destroy the creature once and for all. We've seen this done before, and the film offers almost nothing new (besides a new location). In fact, the movie uses recycled ideas from the past two movies in this one. It all feels very pointless and redundant.

I did appreciate that the film at least tried to give us time with the characters so that we could identify with them. It doesn't exactly work because they are so boring, but at least they tried. Grown up Mike Brody is played by Dennis Quaid, who is fine considering the circumstances. I think of all the actors to carry the Brody name, you can do signficantly worse than Dennis Quaid. Still, this would obviously not be his finest hour. The film also features performances by Louis Gossett, Jr. and Lea Thompson in her feature film debut. They aren't exactly spectacular.

The biggest problem with this film is that it is all too predictable. We've seen this all before, and Jaws 3 follows the same script. It did use the big new technology of the day- "3D," which looks absolutely awful on regular television sets. The movie also has major holes in logic, which makes the entire film just seem silly. There's not a whole lot to love about this movie.

While this is certainly not a good movie, it does have some redeeming qualities. It's always fun to see a giant shark killing people (although only 5 people actually die). I enjoyed seeing Dennis Quaid run around all serious in the midst of a pretty absurd movie. This film does, though, sadly mark the point when the Jaws franchise should have ended. The premise was enough for two movies, but it ran out of steam with the third (and probably shouldn't have been extended to the a fourth film).



Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 5.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Jaws, Jaws 2, Jurassic Park, Deep Blue Sea