Ladies and gentlemen, INTRODUCING... Mayor Larry Vaughn the B!@#$%d!

Rating: 7/10 (27 April 2016)

by no means a light-hearted family bonding movie of survival however. It's an outright claw and scramble your way to safety, every man for yourself - I guess we have to work together now bloodbath. This ride gets down to brass tacks right away. No build up. You are off on the first hill full speed ahead.
"Jaws". humph. Jaws. Wrong title for this movie. The name of this film should be "Mayor Larry Vaughn the B!@#$%d". To me - what's the shark? The pinnacle of natural organic breeding that happened to spawn one of the biggest sharks on the planet. That's like anthropomorphizing a volcano and calling the film "Lava Hands". That mayor single-handedly murdered at least 5 poor innocent folks just to keep his little tourist town revenue stream up. But, like real life - I don't see jails for the likes of this guy. Sadly - in the end - we don't see him out on the boat, taking up arms, and dying trying to right things in the progress. Classic. Now that's real! Now, you would think these kinds of plot devices and over all story arc to not be a Spielberg trope or standby, odd - well, that's because this movie is actually based on a popular book released barely over a year prior; and after Steve processed it, add an timeless Mr. Williams - and bam. It's an instant classic movie.
The pacing in this film overall, and dating still stands up well to time. It has believable characters, the actors mesh well, and it has far more than it's share of horror aspects cemented in place. Horror? This is a horror movie? Oh, bet your ass it is - when you think about it, it's actually worse. This damn thing could be out there right now, stalking swimmers - ready to "swallow whole" the next hapless poor soul. It's a 25+', 3 ton, hunting, stalking, never-sleeping, murder machine.. and you cant see it until it's right up on ya. Oh, and by the way, bullets loose their kinetic energy after less feet in water than you realize. So good luck.
What's best overall about this film? IT IS PG. No kidding. This film had more gore than half the rated R horror films in the last 15 years, and it has legs, arms shooting off. It has people being eaten alive, bitten in half, and desperation at ridiculously stressful moments. It has FULL FRONTAL NUDITY. But - no swearing. Thank god! This might just be something you couldn't show at church. That's something I forget to mention about yesterday's film, Poltergeist... another Spielberg film - PG. No kidding there - faces ripped off, parents smoking pot with kids in the house, mom getting raped by a entity... but no swearing. Whew! This film, a first in it's series is a classic Hollywood example of starting a franchise after a clear ending - simply due to the overwhelming success. While it's not the first killer "believable" animal horror film, it's definitely one of the earliest that comes to mind in your average horror fan.