An average movie

Since 'Jaws' was a huge success and the very first summer blockbuster, of course, they eventually had to make a sequel. Unfortunately, like most sequels, this one was pretty disappointing. The first issue is that the concept can work only once in my opinion. Indeed, as a stand-alone, it worked fine, but the second time around, the story was virtually the same thing and not only it was the same thing but the element of surprise was gone and what remained was this feeling of déjà vu throughout the whole thing. The other issue is that Jeannot Szwarc is no Steven Spielberg, that's for sure. Indeed, even though Spielberg had a rather small budget and many issues during the production, he still managed to make one of the most thrilling features. This time, even though I'm pretty sure the budget was doubled, they still used the same trick (show the shark as less as possible) and it still looked really cheap. Above all, except for one scene when they managed to bring up a kid on a boat just a second before he was beaten by the shark, I really had a hard time to feel excited about the whole thing. There were a couple of good ideas, I liked the focus on the teenagers and the way Brody seemed to become really paranoid but, unfortunately, those ideas were barely developed. To conclude, I think I'm being actually generous with my rating but I guess it is still worth a look, especially if you love the first installment.

6/10