Jaws 3 (1983)

Ladies and germs, I am about to bring down from the mountain my Three Simple Truths for Sequels: the three rules that every sequel in its right mind should follow if they ever expect to earn any respect (and/or money) alongside the original source material.

...and yes, I realize there are a few anomalies to these rules out there, but just bear with me for the next few paragraphs, okay? Thanks.

1) Don't try to be too far north of the original's intent. You were successful the first time for a reason (i.e.: If the original was a comedy, don't make the sequel a drama. And vice versa).

2) If you had a certain level of quality (direction, cinematography, editing) the first time around, try to maintain it.

3) Often times you can't get the same actors from the original for the sequel; if that be the case, at least try to get the same caliber of actors.

It's amazing how many film makers fail to follow such simple, easy-to-understand rules when they follow up a multi-million dollar barn-burning film. Love 'em or hate 'em, the Friday the 13th flicks all followed the same routine since 1979 and have endured far into the future because they follow those three rules.

And the same goes for enduring series like your Nightmare on Elm Streets, your Aliens, your Godzillas, your Gameras, your Lord of the Rings, your Pirates of the Caribbeans, your Rambos and so it goes.

There are many examples of a movie series that declines into tedium and diminishing profits because of their failure to adhere to the TSTFS (as I call them now for brevity's sake):

The original Porky's was laugh-out-loud funny, Porky's II: The Next Day may have followed Rules #2 and #3, but Rule #1 was forgotten altogether to make room for subplots about the Ku Klux Klan, political bargaining and zombies, so much so that their third installment might as well have been a made-for-TV movie.

Home Alone was funny, as well as successful. Home Alone 2 was more of the same and also made tons of money. But Home Alone 3 ignored Rules #2 and #3 and the series as a whole suffered so much by comparison that Home Alone 4 went straight to Cable TV. Basic cable TV. The Family Channel, to boot!

Which brings me to Jaws. Lovely Jaws. The 1975 powerhouse directed by no less than up-and-coming director Steven Spielberg from a script co-authored by Peter Benchley, who wrote the book the movie was based on. And featuring the great acting triptych of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw. Award after award, box-office record after box-office record and going strong in the hearts and minds of many generations of movie lovers still today.

Why NOT make a sequel?

Well, Jaws 2 came out, three years after the fact, with more than enough buzz to keep even more people out of the water, and it at least adhered to TSTFS Rules #1 and #3 by keeping Scheider in the cast and the main storyline basically the same as before. But with Spielberg tending to other projects and Benchley writing elsewhere, the quality and story suffered somewhat...and there was something just a little unsettling about the "scare quotient" of the shark. Meaning? The shark just didn't look ...well...real enough.

Oh, Jaws 2 still made a boatload of money anyway, and audience reaction wasn't all that bad, meaning another sequel shouldn't have been long off.

It took five more years, but another sequel did come. And that sequel was Jaws 3.

Or as I like to call it: The Perfect Example of the Three-Way TSTFS Offender.

How so? Let's look at it rule by rule:

Firstly, try as it may to be a scary drama in the Spielberg vein, Jaws 3 cannot belay its original source as being an outright PARODY of the 1975 original (in fact, its original title was Jaws 3, People 0. True story...); and there are so many scenes that are played as both intentional and unintentional comedy that any dramatic and/or scary moments are outright obliterated by the fact that they're underplayed in the very next scene by some silly bit of business out of left field. And then, of course, there's this whole 3-D business and the camera zooming in on otherwise mundane object for those wearing the stupid blue-and-red glasses. Not exactly something you'd expect from a scary flick in 1983 - a closeup of a floating fish head, Oohhhh....

Next, there's the whole look of the film itself; everything is so cheap and so chintzy that this oceanic theme park looks about as lousy as the kid's park in the middle of that South Korean King Kong ripoff A*P*E (another review for another time...). Also, it was right about here that the shark (Bruce) began the tradition that was boldly carried on since then - the shark looks fake. Real fake. Just like that ride at Universal Studios Theme Park where the fiberglass shark jumps out of the water at the trolley as it skims the surface.

In positive or negative, at least Steven Spielberg at least knows how to set up a scene, block it, compose every facet so that everything is shown to its best advantage. Here, director Joe Alves (famous for absolutely nothing else) directs scenes that are so clumsy, awkward and cluttered that everything from the crowd scenes to the two-person shots appear more congested than necessary. Not good.

And while we're talking about the look of the film, a word more about the 3-D effects (that WAS the film's big selling point). In the early '80s, everyone and their brother's movie came out in 3-D, because there was that renaissance of the three-dimension visual effects films of the '50s that returned to haunt us three decades later. What people didn't seem to realize is that most of those films in the '50s were so lousy that 3-D was the only thing they had going for them. '50s: Gorilla at Large. '80s: Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn. You get what I mean.

Thirdly, a look at the original film's cast was a veritable Mount Rushmore of good acting. I mentioned Scheider, Dreyfuss and Shaw before, but there was also dependable character actor Murray Hamilton as the Amity Beach mayor, Lorriane Gary (the wife of MCA president Sid Sheinberg) as the wife of town sheriff Scheider, and even the small parts were so well-cast that the citizens of the small town all rang true.

For Jaws 3, what do we get? No dramatic ringers, that's for sure.

Instead, we get one of the most embarrassing moments Louis Gossett, Jr. ever committed to film as the park owner who is oblivious to every single danger presented. And a year after winning an Oscar for An Officer and a Gentleman. Sheesh.

And it's not like Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkindale and Lea Thompson are bad actors. Not at all. But here, everyone just plays so stupid and unobservant that acting is simply not an option. They all just react to the stupidity of each others' actions. For that, you can blame the THREE (!!) writers of the screenplay. They should have known better, especially their idea of a woman telling off her good-for-nothing boyfriend goes along the lines of "he can take a flying leap in a rolling doughnut on a gravel driveway!".

...yeah.

Then again, maybe they did know better and just ignored their better instincts. Hmm....

Even the story stinks: a shark is trapped inside the artificial environment of the water park and, despite evenryone's best efforts to subdue it before it eats everybody, the shark's even bigger mother gets in and wreaks more havoc and disaster. Then they blow up the park and the sharks sky high - and maybe two dolphins and four people survive...and that's it.

Oh, and no characer development involved. Almost forgot. Well, unless you count a minute or two where they mention Quaid's relation to the Scheider character from movie #1. But nothing else, so don't go looking for anything else.

Be that as it may, for as lousy as this movie was and for as bad as the acting and as cheap the effects and as cheesy the whole enterprise turned out, it did make money in spite of their not being one positive review in its initial release. So, no respect, but lots of money; basically a movie version of Paris Hilton. This proved the indestructible power of the Jaws series, and why they pressed on four years after the fact to make yet another, even worse, sequel (Jaws The Revenge). This just goes to show, as I stated earlier, that there are always exceptions to the rule, but not often, and more usually are successful because more people realize that opportunities like this don't come around all that often.

Think about it: bad special effects. Goofy acting. Stupid plot points. Laughable dramatic highlights. It's the '50s all over again. Bigger budgets, but still....

And in spite of all this, my three rules still stand. Movies as bad as Jaws 3 as just more impervious to logic than others.