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With the departure of virtually everyone involved with the first two Jaws movies, it was up to a new creative team to conceive of something new to attract audiences to the cinema for another sequel to Steven Spielberg's 1975 masterpiece. During the early 1980s, 3D horror films were revived, leading to the likes of Amityville 3-D and Friday the 13th Part III. Thus, the gimmick was applied to Jaws 3, which was, in turn, entitled Jaws 3-D. The final result is one of the most legendarily bad movies of all time, serving as a prime example of everything wrong with sequels. It fits the "bad sequel" bill on every count - it's unnecessary (yet another film about a killer great white shark that involves the same family?), gimmicky (3D...), and looks noticeably cheaper than its predecessors. Gone are the competent production values, taut editing, believable acting and astute screenwriting. What remains is an empty carcass.
Since both Steven Spielberg and Richard Dreyfuss bolted after the first film, and Roy Scheider had the good sense to call it quits after the sequel, Jaws 3-D introduces a new cast, though there are returning characters, because contrivance. There's also a new locale - Sea World in an undisclosed Florida location. Taking centre stage here are the Brody offspring, Michael (Dennis Quaid) and Sean (John Putch), who have moved away from their Amity home after the first two movies. Michael works at Sea World with his girlfriend (Bess Armstrong), but - shock horror - a thirty-five-foot man-eating great white shark shows up and begins eating people. Personally, I'd have given the shark a knife and fork.
The original Jaws worked due to its primal simplicity. A shark entered a populated island community and began munching on the population, and a trio of men set out to kill it. In the first sequel, the incredible coincidence of another shark in the same location terrorising the same community is hard to swallow. For Jaws 3, the coincidence that the Brody boys are still terrorised by a monster-sized killer shark - even after relocating to another state - is impossible to accept. Astonishingly, the screenplay was penned by original Jaws scribe Carl Gottlieb and respected novelist Richard Matheson, but apparently, the script was heavily altered by uncredited script doctors and the production was rushed.
Another critical factor in the success of the original Jaws was the vision and talent of director Steven Spielberg. Jaws 2 director Jeannot Szwarc did not prove as talented as Spielberg, but at least he could construct a workable film and conjure up a certain degree of tension. When Jaws 3 rolled around, the producers made the baffling decision to hand the reigns to Joe Alves, who served as production designer and second unit director for the first two films. Having no real directorial experience before (or since), Alves was clearly in over his head when attempting to master the subtleties of building tension, as there is zero suspense. The attack scenes are more uncomfortable than anything else. Jaws 3 also severely lacks style, as scenes lumber by without visual panache or genuinely exciting moments. The only unique developments in the visual style come from how some shots are presented since it was designed as a 3D movie, so there are several instances of things shooting towards the camera. But clearly, nobody could be bothered enough to actually finish any special effects shots, as there are thick black lines around 3D objects, and some of the digital compositing is possibly the worst ever seen in a studio movie.
The special effects are a constant source of amusement, with incredibly fake mechanical sharks and awful computer representations of them. It's baffling, but with each subsequent film, the shark looks faker than ever before. Shouldn't the effects be increasing rather than declining? Shouldn't the always-improving cinematic technology result in more believable-looking sharks, especially since almost ten years had elapsed since the first film? The thirty-five-foot great white in this film never looks real - it looks stiffer than concrete, it's incredibly slow, and it even appears to have a fucking tongue for whatever reason. As a matter of fact, the shark never seems to actually catch its prey - said prey literally swims into its mouth. In addition, the shark growls at times. But even more hysterical is the shark's miraculous ability to swim in reverse or swim on the spot!
As with the first two Jaws movies, Jaws 3 does feature real footage of sharks, but the technique is enormously ineffective here. The footage is very obviously sped up most of the time, and it often doesn't fit (daytime footage of a shark is used during a night-time sequence, which looks baffling). Also, the filmmakers seemingly ran out of great white shark footage, so random catfish footage is used instead. Compounding all of this awfulness, John Williams didn't score the film, though bits and pieces of the classic theme are used. Williams' replacement was a television veteran named Alan Parker, whose inexperience with feature films is painfully obvious, as the music never evokes a sense of terror, dread, excitement or suspense. The entire enterprise looks, feels and sounds like a cheap TV movie.
Somehow, though, Jaws 3-D manages to be strangely compelling in its terribleness. Even though it's unmistakably bad, at least you can laugh at it along the way. Cheesy acting, risible dialogue, terrible special effects, skewiff pacing... Jaws 3 represents the whole "so bad it's good" package. It will never be mistaken for a decent (or even a half-decent) film, but it's fun to watch with your friends after having a few beers. It's even more fun to ridicule. At least it's a fun bad movie...it gets points for that.
3.9/10
