"JAWS"

Rating: 1/10 (26 February 2020)

"JAWS" (1975, Spielberg) is exploitative trash at its lowest, boasting poor visuals and a monster so rushed that it is deserving of deepest sympathy rather than fear. The only things holding this garbage together are a great cast, brilliant music, simplicity, and being based on a solid work of literature.
This is one of those films that, sadly, got many of us into films as kids. I know that for me the voices of the performers were as important to me growing up as my own family's! But, nostalgia aside, this is also one of those films that rarely gets criticised and it should.
It's a shoddy film, poorly made, and John Williams's score covers a multitude of sins, like lacquer over cheap splintering wood.
I love a physical monster as much as the next sensible person, but this shark is transparent from the side, floppy-mouthed and growling (yes, growling, and I don't just mean the dinosaur sounds added over its sinking carcass; if you pay attention to a couple of scenes well enough you'll hear what at first sounds like water rushing, but is in fact a subtly placed growl, so it wasn't the ridiculous 3 & 4 that invented that) monster that needs to be put out of its misery. And when that time comes it is stupid. A shark, swimming towards a man on a sinking boat, chewing an oxygen tank like a big silver cigar, that gets blown inexplicably up into little pieces.
To make things worse this did such a good job of scaring people that it made heroes of any dumb fisherman who wanted to go and murder sharks and gave false intrigue to the average holiday goer or idiot when confronted with a set of freshly torn out jaws to buy. ... much to the bewilderment of the cast and crew who had been sure the film was dreadful.
I take umbrage with anyone who says Spielberg did a great job because he scared people out of water. Yeah great, let's be scared of going swimming. Let's scare our kids out of enjoying the world. Spielberg's job was to make money for Universal, which he did successfully because mugs love to rip themselves off. When I go into the sea the last thing I'm thinking about is floppy old Bruce eating his way towards me, I'm more concerned about stepping on a weaver fish and going to hospital.
I also hate this idea that "JAWS" changed cinema for the better. How exactly? "JAWS 3D" and "JAWS THE REVENGE" are in constant competition for worst movies ever made and aside from them there's been a glut of subpar rip-off movies from around the globe since. Yeah, great.
Then there's the hilarious sequels, each just as bad as the first, all anti-shark propaganda aimed at the most vulnerable in society- the gullible, the young, and the foolish.
The novel by Peter Benchley is the superior work but it's still exploitative trash. How "JAWS" the movie captured the imaginations of millions (including me for many years) is beyond me. The only bad review I can find is from the LA Times in 1975 who took issue with it being a family film when it will be so frightening for children. That is a sound concern but "JAWS" is worse than that, it's garbage that we're told is genius. Think for yourselves.