Jaws 3-D

• (Jaws III in its 2-D form)
• Directed by Joe Alves
• July 22, 1983
• Based on characters created by Peter Benchley

When a young great white shark infiltrates a marine park from the sea, it seemingly attacks and kills the park’s employees only for them to realize there is a larger predator at work.

Jaws 3-D (or Jaws III in its 2-D form) movie attempts to answer the question: how many times can one family’s history possibly intersect with killer sharks? This was my first time watching it and I certainly understand the dislike for the film at this point. It’s not great but rather an example pure trash. It’s a movie with almost no redeeming qualities. I have trouble even calling it a guilty pleasure.

Jaws 3-D was certainly designed to take advantage of the 3-D process which had started to come back into vogue at the time. Nice idea but the film as a whole looks like it was so incredibly cheaply done. It has TV movie level production values. The opening credits alone are borderline self-parody.

Characters in the story put themselves in harm’s way via unbelievable stupidity or just overreact given what limited knowledge they should have. For example the mad panic which sweeps the crowd at the underwater facility when the shark is just swimming towards them is laughable. Clearly something is going to happen but only the viewer knows that. All those park goers understand is that a shark is swimming towards them. If they were that insecure with the safety of the tube why did they go down in the first place?

Roy Scheider wisely did not return for this film. In fact nobody from the first or second movie returned for this film. For the third movie in a row, the two sons are recast (this time as much older individuals) who bear almost no resemblance to each other. Dennis Quaid is Mike who is working at SeaWorld with his girlfriend Kathryn (Bess Armstrong) and Sean is played by John Putch who what best can be said about his performance here is that he is in the movie. Louis Gossett Jr. rounds out the major players as park mogul Calvin Bouchard.

The story itself takes place at an addition to SeaWorld financed by Bouchard and his need for it to be a hit causes most if not all the major problems. And for some reason rather than listening to the experts he’s paid good money for he spends more time paying attention to a couple of glory hounds that clearly know little to nothing about sharks.

The special effects are not that special. I’ve seen bathtub toys that are more realistic than the shark they used here. There are ways to photograph practical effects to make them look plausible. They don’t use them here. For example, in the aforementioned tube when the shark rams it the action looks like a gentle bump yet we get some very loud crashing amongst the screams of the crowd.

While we have a decent cast for a guilty pleasure, the material they’re given is not good. The characters are about as two dimensional as one can get. They have no depth to them. Even the legacy characters really have nothing to them not that Mike and his brother were that well rounded out to begin with.

As I think about it, it’s hard to find an actual definitive characteristic about any character in the movie. Aside from Brody being a scientist much of what he says could’ve come out of the mouth of his girlfriend. And his brother is inconsequential at a good moment. I can tell you the one guy was in the show Manimal but aside from doing a Hannibal Smith impression with his cigar there’s not too much to tell about the character. And his pal is Australian I guess? Not sure.

As shock and excitement go, the most shock and excitement you will get is in the opening minutes when that fish gets chomped in half and its head slowly rotates in the water. Beyond that there isn’t much. And that goes with the TV movie quality of this. Much of this would have worked in a TV movie of the time but is just too, well, dumb and cheap for a major motion picture. I would argue this might even be a little fondly remembered if it was a movie of the week.

While Jaws 2 was not great, this is the film where the series officially jumped the shark. It left the last remaining elements of logical character development and just general logic behind in order to get kills on the screen. Unlike the film that spawned all this, it’s not intelligent or natural or well done on any level.

Jaws 3-D (or Jaws III in its 2-D form) is certainly a movie, but not a movie I would recommend. It has no excitement or tension and isn’t even a passable technical achievement. You can certainly skip this one!