Got to see it in the theater for the first time last week

Rating: 10/10 (19 March 2007)

I'm not sure I've seen this from start to finish since I'd really learned about film-making. In all honesty, I used to watch Jaws 1 through Revenge regularly on TV in my childhood (I remember staying up really late for USA Network marathons and being scared out of my wits  thank God for commercials!), and I wouldn't have been able to tell you that the original Jaws was the definitive, and only worthy Jaws movie at the time. Seriously, Jaws 3D was just as thrilling (and I didn't even know it was supposed to be in 3D!), and I vividly recall, having seen the first three of them several times, how excited I was when Jaws: The Revenge first appeared on TV (I was probably around 10). I wonder if I would have been happier had I remained just as ignorant. Hmm Anyhow, I'm not, and, damn it, I can tell you that Steven Spielberg's Jaws is one of the single most amazing feats of film-making ever. It's just astounding how ingrained some of these images are in my head. And just how chilling the film remains after 30+ years. There is one moment that I wish I had forgotten, just so that I could experience it again for the first time: when Roy Scheider is shoveling chum into the water, facing the camera, and the shark jumps out of the water to catch some. This is the first time in the film that the monster appears without his trademark John Williams score (arguably the most well known score in the history of movies), and it's just a jump-out-of-your-skin moment. But, of course, I was expecting it to come, so I didn't exactly jump out of my skin. However, one moment I did forget made me do that: when Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss, giving the film's best performance) is pulling the shark teeth out of the hull of the boat and that corpse pops out. Cheap scare, definitely, but, man, was I ever wound up just for the fact that he chose to check that boat out in the water! There's a little to complain about, mostly the completely ridiculous behavior of the animal. It begins to act completely unnaturally, seeking revenge, when, no matter how large it may be, any animal's going to flee that kind of onslaught. I doubt a shark is even this smart, but that creature, at best, would assume that the boat itself was the danger, and since the boat is much bigger than it, it would swim the hell away. At least it's not like Jaws: The Revenge, where the shark, the offspring of the original shark from Jaws, swims to (what would be uninhabitable) Caribbean waters to take its revenge on Roy Scheider's son! This was definitely one of the best theatrical experiences I've ever had. A ball and a half!