I never thought I’d become the resident shark movie guy here at Ruthless, but after Sharknado 3, Big Shark, and now this, it feels more likely than ever. I did this to myself.
My most recent mistake was choosing what I thought to be the most absurd title possible (“Jaws 3-D Got It Right!”) for a brief rant complaining about movie sequels, and suddenly I’m being inundated with not one, but two polite suggestions that I should have actually written more than a sentence or two about Jaws 3-D. Next thing you know, I’m actually re-watching and taking notes on a movie so bad, so inconsequential, that it was not only nominated for five “Razzies,” but failed to take home a single one.
By the third installment, we no longer have any returning cast members from the original; Roy Scheider famously said Mephistopheles couldn’t talk him into doing it, and opted to star in Blue Thunder instead, a movie even more forgotten than Jaws 3-D all these years later. Screenwriter Richard Matheson all but disowned the finished film, and Dennis Quaid has stated he was high on cocaine in every frame in which he appears. Though it did well enough to spawn one more sequel, that was to be the end of the series; while many pale imitations of Jaws would continue to be released in the decades to come, 1987 was the last year in which they were made under the official banner of the franchise.
I have never been fortunate enough to see Jaws 3-D in all its dubious glory (i.e., in 3-D in an actual movie theater), but it is obvious from the start which shots emphasize the effect, as they are generally unimpressive but heavily lingering images of severed body parts floating in clouds of blood underwater. This motif begins in the cold open, in which our many-toothed killing machine warms up by demolishing a large fish and leaving its head to float under the titles (also in garish 3-D, naturally). A rather inauspicious start, but soon enough the beast has infiltrated SeaWorld Orlando, where it is sure to enjoy a moveable feast of human flesh.
Top on the list of possible entrees are Mike Brody (Quaid), son of Martin, who works as the chief engineer of the SeaWorld location with his girlfriend, Kay Morgan (Bess Armstrong), a marine biologist. Mike hasn’t inherited the near-crippling fear/hatred of the ocean exhibited by his father or younger brother, Sean (John Putch), but he does show a marked irreverence for the marine life so important to his beloved, making jokes about sushi and calling dolphins and whales “fish” rather than mammals, and clearly not for the first time.
Speaking of which, there are decidedly more dolphins than sharks in this supposed shark movie! The main two, Cindy and Sandy, are at least as integral to the plot as most of the human characters, as they are the first to clue Kay and the others into the danger facing them, after a great white sneaks into the park through a faulty gate. The dolphins are noticeably afraid to leave their pen and enter the main lagoon, and later that night the shark claims its first human victims, including a SeaWorld mechanic named Shelby Overman (Harry Grant), whose severed arm gets the 3-D underwater cloud of blood treatment seen in the title sequence. It also dispatches a pair of nameless coral thieves who have snuck into the park, but no one seems to really notice or care about them.
In the midst of all this is an awkward, increasingly silly courtship between Sean Brody and one of the park’s water skiers, Kelly Ann Bukowski (Lea Thompson), which begins with the “standoff game,” of which I had never heard of before or since viewing this movie. It is simplicity itself—two people face each other, pressing their hands together, and each attempts to make the other fall off-balance—and to the best of my research ability, it was made up for this movie. Anyway, Sean apparently considers himself a grandmaster of the “sport,” and uses this skill to charm Kelly Ann.
Later, when she wants Sean to go swimming with her, he demurs, saying he doesn’t go in the water. When pressed, he doubles down with the utterly nonsensical “Oh, I swim…. I just don’t go in the water.” What the hell is he swimming in, then? Unearned confidence? Mayonnaise? Pussy? Definitely the latter; all the Brody boys be swimming in pussy (except in the original novel, in which Matt Hooper totally cucks Martin—Peter Benchley was a cold motherfucker for that).
What Jaws 3-D is really lacking, among other things, is any character as compelling as the original Brody, or Hooper, or especially Quint. The closest this one comes to that iconic role is Philip FitzRoyce (Simon MacCorkindale), a douchey big game hunter with a real British accent that constantly seems fake somehow, who wants to kill the shark publicly and broadcast it on national television. Calvin Bouchard (Louis Gossett Jr., fresh off an Oscar win), manager of SeaWorld Orlando, roughly fills in the role of Mayor Vaughn in that he makes hasty decisions motivated by profit over the public interest.
As in the original, there is a brief, premature celebration when a great white is captured, only to be spoiled by some science-loving busybody (in this case Kay) proving that only a much bigger shark could be behind the attacks, and in an effort to set this one apart, it turns out the Big Boss shark is the smaller one’s mother. So now it’s personal, and time for… the revenge? No, sorry, that’s the fourth one. But Mama Shark is out for blood, and she begins to wreak havoc, injuring Kelly Ann and causing a leak in the park’s underwater tunnel system that threatens to drown everyone.
Mama Shark seems just as bored as the audience as we plod into the third act, when the movie jumps some sort of ocean-dwelling creature and brings on the really bad effects, with some of the goofiest and least convincing 3-D ever seen onscreen. We’re talking Birdemic-level clip art effects here, like when Mama Shark smashes through the glass of the control room and actually hovers motionless in the air for a moment just long enough to register as utterly preposterous, before the movie cuts back to conventional camerawork to show the flooding of the control room. Howlingly bad stuff, folks.
FitzRoyce mildly redeems himself to an audience thirsty for blood by getting himself chomped, along with a pin-still-in grenade, in the shark’s jaws, thereby providing the explosion that will ultimately kill it. It is actually a rather good climactic death, with the tension of Brody struggling to pull the pin of the grenade from afar using a bent pole leading up to it, but this is immediately undercut by the most godawful 3-D yet, as the filmmakers indulge in one final image of severed body parts floating in clouds of blood underwater, in this case the titular jaws of the now dead Mama Shark.
A happy ending is had by all who survived, including Cindy and Sandy, who say “hold my beer” to my previous claim that the floating jaws were the worst use of 3-D in the movie. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: from classics like The Deer Hunter to somewhat lesser cinematic efforts like this one, thank god Hollywood eventually got over its 1970s and 80s infatuation with ending on a freeze frame. At least The Deer Hunter didn’t have 3-D dolphins haphazardly inserted into its final shot.
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