Jaws (1975)
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Jaws Movie Review
Jaws is a 1975 thriller horror film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss. It’s one of the most overrated blockbusters of all time.
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“You’re gonna need a bigger boat“
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A police chief, a marine scientist and a fisherman spring into action after a white shark terrorizes the inhabitants of a quiet island. I first watched this movie about 8 years ago and I did not care for it in the slightest. Upon this revisit, I appreciate its technical aspects more, but I still do not love it, not even close. It to me remains an overrated movie that is okay and nothing more than that.
I do realize this film’s impact on pop culture and especially on the rise of blockbusters in the media of film. However, I personally attribute more that impact to ‘A New Hope’ as it’s not only a much better film, but it’s also much more in line with what a blockbuster is and what it represents. This one was not as influential as many would like to think, and thankfully so.
So what is it that really does not excite me about this movie? First and foremost, I do not find it to be scary nor thrilling. The shark was famously a practical effect that did not work most of the time so he chose to make it appear less, and to everybody apparently that worked, but for me that did not work. The shark appeared way too rarely, and some of those sequences were memorable, but most weren’t all that intense.
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But the biggest reason why I find it not great is its very slow pace, and a very uninvolving narrative, which is borderline tedious almost in its entirety. Nothing happens here. The first half is a giant set-up which is overlong and downright pointless in some filler scenes while the second half is supposed to make you care about these characters, but I simply never did.
Roy Scheider is very forgettable as the main character, and again quite boring. The same goes for Richard Dreyfuss who is usually much more interesting, but here that is not the case. And I should care about them and their somehow fun dynamic, but none of that was fun to me, and those boat sequences were overlong and dull.
Jaws does explore realistically what would happen if a shark were to attack people on a popular beach, but still that overly realistic depiction did not lead to an engaging watch as the movie was concerned with way too many uninteresting, unnecessary details. The dialogue is good and the script had some bright spots, but most of it is simply not great.
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Jaws is technically superb as I have already stated above. Naturally, the cinematography is great and the score from John Williams is amazing, and perfectly utilized in those horror scenes that the scenes were much more intense with that score. I also admired how the shark looked and moved, and the whole film looked great with some quite memorable imagery and line delivery too. However, Spielberg’s direction is not great, and this is far from his best works. Quite on the contrary, it is one of his weaker films that represent everything that is usually wrong with his work.
Jaws looks great, it sounds terrific owing to that amazing John Williams score and it has some memorable lines of dialogue and sequences. However, all of the characters are awfully tedious and the overall story is mostly very uninvolving. Frankly, this to me is one of the most overrated movies of all time that is far from the best or most important blockbuster feature out there. I find it only passable and I am perplexed with such enormous praise that it constantly receives.
