[3]

I went into Jaws: The Revenge (the fourth movie in the series) thinking, ‘Hey, it can’t be worse than the third one.’ And I was right. It’s exactly as bad as the third one. Though for slightly different reasons. Part four brings back not only the shark, but the Brody family. Lorraine Gary reprises her role as Mrs. Brody, now widowed, and her two sons are back as well — the oldest now played by Lance Guest from The Last Starfighter. Her youngest son is killed in the first ten minutes when the same shark from the previous three movies reappears and rips his arm off, then sinks his boat and eats the rest of him. So right away, I’m thinking — Christ, the same shark? Again?!? But I believe in the magic of the movies, so I suspend my disbelief and I continue watching.

Right after the funeral, Mrs. Brody starts talking some crazy shit. She thinks the shark is out to kill her entire family. And at this point, I’m like, okay. Bitch just lost her kid, she’s in grief. She’ll get over it. She doesn’t really mean it. So I keep watching as Mrs. Brody goes to stay with her eldest (Guest), his wife, and their little daughter in the bahamas. Michael Caine pops up in the movie. That’s always a good thing, right? Well, not necessarily — before the 90s, Caine would make crappy movies to pay the rent, and this definitely turned out to be one of those movies.

Look! There’s Lorraine Gary doing something stupid!

Jaws: The Revenge is much better crafted than Jaws 3-D. But it’s more poorly conceived. That shit I mentioned about Mrs. Brody thinking the shark is out to get her entire family? Well, she really thinks that. It’s not just the grief talking. And worse, the shark actually IS out to kill her entire family. It even swims to the bahamas, where Great Whites literally cannot survive. The breaking point for me, however, is the start of the third act — after the movie’s centerpiece scene involving the shark and a bunch of kids riding a banana boat. Once Brody’s granddaughter is nearly eaten, we see Lorraine Gary walk directly off the beach and onto a sailboat. She drives it out into the ocean. She has no weapons of any kind. No plan. She just goes. And the shark follows her. And she stands on the boat while the shark gets closer and closer and closer to her. And the goddamned shark literally jumps out of the water high enough to damn-near eat her ass — which is thirteen kinds of stupid.

What’s even more stupid — and I’m spoiling the end of the movie here because it’s too stupid for you to watch anyway — is that they kill the shark by stabbing it with the tip of the boat, causing it to explode. No bombs are involved. The shark just explodes.

Fortunately for us, the shark hasn’t been back since 1987. Let’s hope it stays that way.

With Mario Van Peebles.

Probably the only good part of this whole shitty movie.