My Epinions Review of a Really, Really, Really Bad Movie: Jaws - The Revenge

alexdg1's Full Review: Jaws 4 - The Revenge

Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie''s plot.

One of the unhappy realities of a moviegoer's existence is Hollywood's penchant of exploiting a popular and critically-successful film that was intended to be a one-time affair and makes unnecessary (to the audience, anyway) sequels that are (a) rehashes of the first film, (b) not as well-made as the original, and (c) so illogical and awful that they can't be even be considered "so bad that they are good" guilty pleasures.

Jaws: The Revenge (also known as Jaws 4) is one of the best examples of totally worthless sequels. It makes More American Graffiti look like a masterpiece worthy of a zillion Academy Awards, and it is even sillier than Jurassic Park III (which doesn't even have a Michael Crichton novel to justify its existence on film).

Written by Michael de Guzman and directed by Joseph Sargent, this movie asks us to suspend our disbelief so much that we'd accept the following plot points:

1. White sharks can either come back from the dead or develop a sense of Mafia-like vendettas against members of a specific family.

2. White sharks can travel over 1100 miles from the cold waters off Long Island to the warm waters of the northern Caribbean to follow a particular person.

3. A person can have vivid flashbacks (through the magic of archival footage from Jaws) of events he or she did not witness in person.


Even more unbelievable than the above plot points is that someone, perhaps knowing that actress Lorraine Gary is also married to Sid Sheinberg, then the studio chief at Universal, greenlighted this absolutely awful movie.

For those fortunate souls who have yet to encounter this 87-minute rip-off of Steven Spielberg's classic 1975 shark tale Jaws, the basic story begins on a cold Christmas as Sean Brody (Mitchell Anderson), following in his late dad's footsteps as a cop, becomes food for the Great White Toothy Fish in a surreal scene underscored by a choir singing holiday songs.

Naturally, Ellen Brody (Gary, reprising her role from the first two films) is horrified. She's still grieving for her late husband Martin (who, mercifully, wasn't eaten by a shark), and she remembers all the horrible close encounters the Brody family has had with great white sharks. (I am still having an internal debate on whether the finned villain is a shark with the same ability to regenerate itself a la Stephen King's Christine, or if it's a family of sharks with an uncanny ability to track down members of the Brody family and whack them, Mafia style.)

Had I written the screenplay, I'd have had Ellen simply sell her house in Amity, pack up, and move somewhere in the Midwest, a locale far beyond the ability of even a super-shark to track-and-whack someone. That would have been the sensible thing to do, but because this screenplay's conceit is to have good old Mrs. Brody face off against the Shark With a Thousand Lives (or a Thousand Angry Relatives), this doesn't happen.

Instead, de Guzman and Sargent (who also produced Jaws The Revenge) ask the audience to seriously believe that Ellen goes to the Bahamas to join her surviving son Michael (Lance Guest), who is tempting fate in his career as a marine biologist. You'd think someone who, in the previous three films, has witnessed more shark attacks than Peter Benchley ever dreamed of when he wrote his beach-read of a novel would have chosen a safer line of work - astronaut, firefighter, soldier - but no. He had to pick a job that would make Ellen repeat her famous line from the first movie, "Get out of the water now!"

Once in the warm, tourist-friendly islands, Ellen meets and falls in love with Hoagie (Michael Caine), a local pilot. His role in this film is to create a sense of jealousy in Michael (a plot point that is introduced but, as you probably imagine, never resolved once the film goes into "who will the shark eat next?" mode. He also is there as a potential last-minute rescuer and/or more food for Mr. (or is it Mrs.??) Shark.

Also appearing in Jaws The Revenge is actor/director Mario Van Peebles, who plays Mike's Bahamian colleague Jake with a Caribbean patois which is as fake as the incredibly fake-looking shark. His particular purpose in this disaster is to provide some unintentional comic relief and, yes, to die graphically and in bizarrely-chosen slow motion.

To say that Jaws The Revenge is bad is almost like saying Saddam Hussein was simply a misunderstood head of state who was merely bad. It is excruciatingly awful, without any of the drama, human interest, and believable interaction between the human characters that makes the 1975 original such a classic. The script is inept, the direction by the usually reliable Sargent is careless and uninspired, the acting is lazy, and one of America's Funniest Home Videos has better pacing and production values than Jaws 4.

Jaws 4 - The Revenge: Major Cast

Lorraine Gary .... Ellen Brody
Lance Guest .... Michael Brody
Mario Van Peebles .... Jake
Michael Caine .... Hoagie Newcombe
Karen Young .... Carla Brody
Judith Barsi .... Thea Brody
Lynn Whitfield .... Louisa
Mitchell Anderson .... Sean Brody
Jay Mello .... Young Sean Brody

© 2011-2012 Alex Diaz-Granados.  All Rights Reserved

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age