Often mimicked, never bettered!

Rating: 10/10 (30 April 2000)

This is one of those films that you can watch every once in a while, even though you know what's coming up. After all these years, Jaws is still a great movie. It's put up with a critical backlash, but only because of parodied rubbish like Piranha, and more recently, Lake Placid.
The overall film might appear less than the sum of its parts - that's due partly to the superb performances turned in by Shaw, Scheider and Dreyfus, and their interaction with each other. The other reason is that, despite the wisecracks about rubbery sharks, we don't really see the shark attacking that much; rather, the beauty of the film is about the presumptions we make and the fears we have about what's going on beneath the water, and what's out there in the deep.
You should see this film again - bear in mind how old it is, how good it looks, (the locations on Martha's Vineyard are beautiful), and how you'll jump out of your skin in the 'head' scene! Jaws is a masterpiece.