We’re gonna need bigger bloat.
Jaws 2 didn’t exactly jeopardize beach-going like its fore-shark-bear did, but it was the highest-grossing sequel of all time…Until Rocky II one year later. (Wait, it did better than Bond films like Thunderball?! Damn inflation.)
Movie franchises weren’t so damn well deathless in 1983 as they are today (despite some inroads made by the horror genre). Hence, the prospect of a third Jaws movie must’ve seemed pretty patently ridiculous. So it seemed to Universal’s David Brown and David Zanuck, who pitched their next entry as Jaws 3, People 0, an Airplane!-style spoof done by National Lampoon’s Animal House scribes (and John Hughes!) and directed by Joe Dante – mastermind behind the later gonzo-humored, Gizmo-starring Gremlins. Yes, Joe “Best Jaws Rip-Off Ever Piranha” Dante, making fun of Jaws in a Jaws-titled sequel! The mind boggles and the bowel quivers.
It’s a Hollywood satire, about a shark terrorizing the filming of Jaws 3. The opening sees Peter Benchley devoured in his swimming pool whilst working on the script. Movie producers are the bad guys – makes sense. Behold, a script review!
‘Twasn’t to happen, not with Stephen Spielberg’s infamously nonfunctional sense of humor (see 1941). Rather, Jaws 3, People 0 was a zero, and the production rights passed on to some jerk named Alan Landsburg. Seeing blood-tinged dollar signs, he (and someone called Rupert Hitzig) set about creating an ostensibly serious third Jaws. For that, we’ll need a director. That’ll be Joe Alves, delivering his only motion picture ever. As director, that is, for the man was the production designer on the previous Jawses (Is that right?), and even second unit director for Jaws 2. He even worked for John Carpenter. Still, if you can imagine a further step down from Spielberg to TV director, then production designer ‘ll be it.
The screenplay is ascribed to scribes Richard Matheson (author of freaking “I Am Legend”) and Carl “I Wrote Jaws” Gottlieb, though the truth is many uncredited and wisely-anonymous script doctors rendered their efforts nigh unrecognizable. It’s just as well; I’d rather not equate Jaws 3-D with intelligent human beings.
Yes, Jaws 3-D. Justifying its existence in some paltry way, this entry can join the illustrious brotherhood of Amityville 3-D and Friday the 13th Part III in the eighties’ 3-D, third-part trilogy of terror. Let us all thank Comin’ at Ya!, a silly western, for the brief ‘80s 3-D revitalization, a silly little cinematic footnote all reviewers of Jaws 3-D just must mention.
Here in 2010, we’re suffering through the ‘80s again, in film content and in another 3-D revival – though this danged one looks to stick! I mean, Avatar did OK. But apart from the mighty Piranha 3D, none of our modern crop seems ready to successfully capitalize on what 3-D once meant, before depth of field and crappy post-conversions became all the rage – I’m talkin’ of gimmickery! The one and only purpose of 3-D in something like Jaws 3-D is to shove things at the lens, again and again. It’s cheesy, silly, stupid as all hell, and makes for a deadly drinking game.
(Too bad all present prints of Jaws 3-D prefer the much inferior title of Jaws III – Ugh! Roman numerals. Too bad, also, that converting cinematic cheese into televisual, er, post-cheese rather blurs up the image. It does crappy movies no favors.)
Consider the inaugural 3-D effect, a rolly-polly fish head. Eat them up, yum! We’re pretty well assured of Jaws 3-D’s class right off the bat, preceding even the title, itself a 3-D effect, even now as Universal has embarrassedly rechristened it in “tasteful” IIIs.
A mass of colorful, happy water-skiers ply their shoulder-standing trade out on the water, as the shark’s fin looms behind them – it’s the same scene that was Jaws 2’s crown jewel, getting repeated for the first of three or so times here. This being a horror movie, ostensibly, the skiers’ craft stalls, they scatter in the water, and at the last possible moment the boat starts back up and they’re all saved from an opening victim’s death.
Rather, the skiers make their way through non-Nixonian water gates into a manmade lagoon, shark in hot shark pursuit just as the gates shut – sending the damn things off track. This gate’ll require further examination later.
We’re at Sea World, our mercifully unique setting for the day, and I mean the real Sea World. This sad little Orlando enterprise, occupying the nebulous purgatory between aquarium and theme park, actually agreed that a gory body count movie would be right for their image. It’s as it Manhattan had actually been OK with Jason’s taking of it.
Reporters (foreground objects) gather around Sea World’s fictional owner, “evil capitalist” Calvin Bouchard (Louis Gossett Jr., fresh off his Oscar win for An Officer and a Gentleman). He exposits on the grand opening of their new attraction, the Undersea Kingdom – a series of pressurized viewing tunnels well underwater in this over-ambitious and nebulous lagoon. Adding that extra touch of prestige to the event, Bouchard has called in the services of Philip FitzRoyce, the Sixteenth Earl of Haddonfield (say wha’?!), whom we can only infer through a lack of filmic evidence is sort of a poncy, Limey version of Jacques Cousteau. He shall be played by Simon Corkingdale, “Manimal” himself, lookin’ for all the world like an unshaven Aaron Eckhart!
Those aren’t our heroes; they’re our villains! As men of financial ease, what else could they be? As such, naturally, they can never have an intelligent thought, not when our heroes can have it instead. And here’s our hero now – Mike Brody (Dennis Quaid, also of 1983’s The Right Stuff, as well as timeless classics The Day After Tomorrow and G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra). Yup, the son of Jaws’ hero (Roy Scheider wouldn’t touch this film with a 25-foot great white), having again ultra-aged in between entries, functioning in some indefinite facility as Sea World’s…um…engineer, or something. Whatever it is, it puts Mike in a position to respond to the sub-Poseidon Adventure disasterizin’ to come.
Responding to that darned busted gate (which leads from Sea World’s priceless lagoon to the open sea), Mike sets a lone greased-up he-man to the dusk-lit repairs alone. Mike cannot do it, Lordie no, ‘cause he’s got a date – with Sea World’s head biologist, the equally youthful (for her job) Kay Morgan (Bess Morgan – lotsa TV). Also, urban cowboy Sean Brody (John Putch) is here visiting, taking a break from his sensible, shark-free Colorado college education. They enjoy a lengthy character scene in Sea World’s world-famous dive bars, where Sean “meets cute” with Sea World water-skier Kelly Bukowski (first timer Lea “Momma McFly” Thompson). They play “Stand Off,” the “I slap you” game – Sean is victorious, earning inevitable Thompson sex, the sort of which Mike and Kay are all too happy to demonstrate for us right now, clothes on.
While this surprisingly comic, well-acted character stuff spools out, that greased he-man is busy at gate repair. Not only at dusk (to take advantage of the light), but without breathing apparatuses. It ain’t too tough, seemingly, for Mike Brody’s engineering masterpiece can be corrected with a single chain and bike lock. This is a stalk sequence, for an unnamed-until-after-death character, so – He’ll die! First…a fish. Take a shot! Then…a SHARK! The jumble of editing and close-ups here make Jaws 2’s equivalent look good. And like that, the he-man is dead of terrible filmmaking, his goggles drifting aimlessly. His arm too…Ooh, nice effects! I ain’t seen blue screen like that since the ‘50s.
Our heroes leave the bar. Walking the beach all romantical-like, Mike and Kay debate their future. Mike’s been offered a one-year job in Venezuela (drug mule?), while Kay has a life-long opportunity at the Scripps Institute. It seems someone in this relationship ‘ll hafta make a compromise, and seeing where Jaws 3-D lies on the great era and genre scale, it sure ain’t gonna be the man. Kay shall agree to abandon her promising career for sweet ol’ Mikey! There, I’ve just saved ya many plot distractions later in the film.
Sean and Kelly, meanwhile, are at the lagoon, considering punching this PG film up to an R with impromptu skinny-dipping. But while the prospect of sexual chastisement must surely appeal to our shark, as a 1980s horror villain, apparently the prospect of devouring coral burglars is even more appealing. For, yeah, these two yahoos have just driven their van onto Sea World property in order to poach its fish, get scared by a reed…and become shark fodder. Maybe the shark just chose them since they go to the massive lagoon’s fog-shrouded, “moody” region, while the lovebird’s beach is entirely tone-free. The yahoos’ demise, by the way, is boring and perfunctory, for the Jaws sequels can never commit to being, you know, scary.
(Nothing is ever made of these deaths – they’re just for our sake. We’re meant to believe there’s no evidence of ‘em – the shark ate their raft and all. Still, one must wonder what the response would be to an abandoned criminals’ van on Sea World property.)
Come day, Mike is confronted by Charlene, utterer of obviously over-scripted lines like “take a flyin’ leap in a rollin’ doughnut in a gravel driveway.” She’s wife to the now-dead greased-up gate-locking mustachioed he-man, who now gets called Shelby. Mike hasta go track down her deadbeat, dead-meat husband, allowing him to break up Kay’s chemistry-free encounter with FitzRoyce. Oh, and as evidence of “Shelby’s” disappearance, here are his passport, driver’s license and credit cards, which he apparently leaves lying around on the floor at home.
Mike and Kay load up to search the lagoon, now seemingly like half a mile deep (!), in a truly astounding yellow submarine, a craft which prompts references to “Thunderbirds,” Toho and The Beatles on all the Internet’s other multitudinous Jaws 3-D reviews. It’s amazing. I have nothing new or clever to say here, so I’ll let screen caps themselves speak for the underwhelmingly hilarious special effects which populate this studio-made, big budget blockbuster feature film.
I guess I’d better address the lagoon itself, though. Naturally, the Undersea Kingdom is housed within, requiring a Mike Brody-designed series of tubes, airlocks, and a freaking “Star Trek” control room set, all rather like something out of Sphere or Deep Blue Sea, NOT a family theme park funhouse – which is what Undersea Kingdom is, doncha know. Hence certain shots depicting the lagoon as deeper than a Melville novel. But, at other times, it’s all of waist deep, or anything in between. See, the lagoon is seemingly also home to the water-skiers’ stunt show, the bumper boats, a free-for-all Sea World beach…and all the park’s valuable sea life roaming the aforementioned attractions freely. Even while they open the inconsequential gates to the ocean on a daily basis so the water-skiers can practice elsewhere. What sense does this make? Well, it justifies granting the shark access to everything once all shark hell breaks loose (one hour from now)…
And, how ‘bout that 3-D? It seems to come in chunks, just like vomit. So we get whole sequences devoted to showcasing the gimmick, which is then promptly forgotten for 20-minute blocks. (Hence the paucity of bold in this review.) Ah, but this is one of those delightful chunks. So THRILL, to rocks, a groping fake skeleton (which the tourists cannot see, natch), and – shriek! – an eel. Also Kay’s trained lesbian dolphins, here screeching like Flipper in their best and slowest Dolphinese, struggling to warn our be-subbed heroes that a giant fiberglass shark is in the water.
And here comes that shark!...That cheap, cheap shark – lamentably, all of 10-feet long. (What’s that, sequel anti-escalation?!) The Brucelet thrashes the sub (just as well – it has a habit of phasing out of our dimension, if the SFX are to be believed), and our heroes Mike and Kay are only able to escape when her lesbian dolphins give them a helpful ride to the shore. Then the Brucelet whomps its seemingly uncircumcised head against a gate wall, the prop shark mechanism retracting like a turtle’s face.
Greedy capitalist Bouchard learning of the beastie, he sees green – FitzRoyce shall kill it, on camera. Oh yeah, that’s the publicity Sea World wants to send the world, that it endorses the murder for recreation of endangered species. Kay comes to her would-be-gobbler’s defense, suggesting rather they capture the beast and add it to Sea World’s menagerie. No great white’s ever been successfully held in captivity – for a duration, at least, seeing as California’s Monterrey Bay Aquarium had a baby white for a while…I saw it, and it was awesome; all the other fish gave it a wide, wide berth. Anyway, it takes an amazingly long time to convince Bouchard, master-capitalist behind the whole Sea World empire, to understand the economic sense of having a live fish on display. Idiot!
The hunt is on! – that very night, difficulty aside, ‘cause God forbid we think through this thing. FitzRoyce, that Great White Hunter, is now literally so – He proposes sedating the animal with goddamned grenades! Again our heroes must over-enunciate the illogic of such an effort, rendering FitzRoyce’s grenades merely a Checkhov’s gun…Hmm, how do ya think the shark’s gonna die in this one?!
A-divin’ FitzRoyce and Kay go, FitzRoyce’s dogsbody filming the charade as he does all of FitzRoyce’s movements (even bowel). Mike, the engineering supervisor, is entrusted to sedate the passing shark with a harpoon gun. And after the shark inconsequentially gums on Kay for a while, Mike fires the harpoon right at in, in the exact same way as Jason in Friday the 13th Part III.
The exceedingly fake, immobile Brucelet is winched into a holding tank under Kay’s care. Those lesbian dolphins sure must be jealous! Satisfying a dumb, dumb running gag, Kay assures Mike it is a fish, not a mammal. Then Mike nears; sensing a delicious Brody nearby, the creature thrashes wildly (that is, a stagehand throttles it from off camera). Kay is thrilled, that their monster is alive and well and ready to be cheaply exploited (by Bouchard, I mean, not the filmmakers).
With like 40 minutes to go, you honestly cannot think this sad little Brucelet is our only shark! Hints are occasionally dropped, through cutaways to the control room, that one of Mike’s ingenious filtration pipes has a massive blockage in it. Whattaya think that is?
Let us not question for now, though, for this ain’t a Jaws film, not really. It’s an excuse to see waterskiing footage, strung throughout an entire narrative. It’s Meatballs 4 all over again! Only these aren’t mere water-skiers; they’re water-skiers – in 3-D, that is. So is Shamu itself, quickly followed by the water it sends up. And in less 3-D, but somehow even more astounding, is Sea World’s famous square-dancing cowgirl pastiche show, complete with anthropomorphized pig (?!).
A minimum wage sea nymph greets the influx of teenaged tourist trios into the Underwater Kingdom, whose entrance is dominated by half a plaster dragon’s bifurcated tongue. Ooh, exciting! Here in the hall of 3-D, the teen gals also discover an exceedingly fake eel and an exceedingly fake tentacle. This is your multi-million dollar new attraction, Bouchard?!...Actually, knowing Sea World, I’d bet it actually is.
Kay feeds her lesbian dolphins (they eat fish) when the park’s PA system listlessly announces the grand news – Come see the captured great white shark! That’s right, Bouchard, you captain of industry, you, bring in your amazing new attraction free when you’ve already got an over-packed opening day crowd! They’ll never have to come to Sea World again! And announce it in a hastily stenciled sign the size of my buttock. It’s idiotic! I mean, there’s a reason Disney’s California Adventure had no good rides upon opening – I mean, apart from DCA being crappy. They needed something to open later, to get audiences to come back. The Jaws folk wouldn’t understand that, though, not whilst constantly trying to undermine their own franchise.
And that shark pool! Oh my! I mean, look at it! They’re lucky the Brucelet didn’t just opt to bite a child’s delicious face off right then and there. And while Kay advised against traumatizing the poor monster, I guess even it cannot take such a condensed mass of contrivances. The Brucelet just up and bellies up, right there before Bouchard’s glorious crowd of 30, hilariously operated into the proper position by Kay herself, all while actress Bess Morgan struggles to convey the “drama” of the situation simultaneously. This movie has problems.
Back in the Undersea Kingdom, the never-asked question of what happened to he-man’s body is soon answered, as it drifts elegantly before the teenaged trio. This movie is funny as hell, ‘cause soon some random jerk has shoved one girl’s face right into the corpse. Kiss it!
Mike and Kay, experts that they are, see to the recovered man carcass (cops are never called), allowing Jaws 3-D a gore effect far out of proportion with how genteelly they’ve treated the be-sharkings so far.
Meanwhile Bouchard, sickened by the persistent pipe pluggage, and the lack of Sharkly Action, demands the pipe be shut down. Little does he know, this is where the Brucelet’s mamma, Brucette, has been dwelling all this time! It’s Gorgo time!
Now…Where indeed did Brucette come from? I mean, it’s clear but one shark passed through Mike’s amazing gate at the start. Either Sea World’s anti-monster security systems are even worse than depicted here, or the 35-foot Brucette gave birth once entering Sea World (just like a hillbilly tourist). Actually, had she given birth, they’d be faced with a dozen five-foot baby sharks terrorizing the tourists! Why didn’t they make THAT movie?!
Mike races off at top speeds (in a golf cart) to warn the waterskiing stunt troupe of impending Sharkly Action, ‘cause apparently they don’t have, you know, radios or anything. Meanwhile, for no reason, Bouchard’s publicist fist fights a fat Hawaiian man. I’m serious.
Brucette’s fin looms directly beneath the skiers (hence, her mouth’s pretty far ahead there). They see the beast; everyone tumbles; crowds panic in the stands, reenacting the final death throngs of the waning disaster genre. And Brucette…eats no one.
Sean and Kelly (remember them?) are off bumping boats at the bumper boats as a precursor to bumping nasty. Brucette bumps their bumper boat (heh!), as they fall into the water. Kelly thrashes, Brucette gives a little love nibble, and…eats no one. Ugh!
And that’s the end of Sean and Kelly’s useless addition to Jaws 3-D.
Now the shark closes in on the Undersea Kingdom. The tourists within (all 30 of ‘em – popular attraction) struggle to find an emergency exit, which is something Mike Brody forgot in all his brilliant, forward-thinking design. “Holy shit!” some laureate opines, as Brucette looms, smashing the flimsy glass windows that make up the majority of the attraction. The panicky idiots all retreat to the central hub, where airlock doors seal them in. What a good design, Mike!
Oh, and he has no contingency plan in case of such an emergency. But a solution is proposed: If, uh, Mike, uh, welds stuff and shit for a while, like, then they can just open those doors. Really, I think sometimes movies propose these over-complicated solutions to mask how poorly engineered their scenarios are to begin with. Oh, and of course the underwater welding can only be done at a specific time – night.
FitzRoyce the Sixteenth Earl of Haddonfield, meanwhile, is back in shark killing mode, to serve as bait as they try to lure Brucette back into her favorite pipe. He’ll die! Yeah, because professional FitzRoyce was too stupid to use a trustworthy rope, he soon tumbles down the underwater passage into Ma’s maw, Jaws’ jaws. He struggles inside the mouth for a bit, well beyond the shark’s teeth, when the waters churn with blood anyway, just because. Oh well, Manimal could’ve escaped that, I can assure you.
Realizing she has no function in this climax, Kay scubas down to Mike to use her own welding gun. (Oh yeah, I forgot, 3-D!) And as the movie reuses the same welding footage again and again, Brucette pounds her way out of the sealed pipe, simple as that (it was the villain’s plan, which is the sole reason it doesn’t work). She goes ahead and chases Mike and Kay along to the central control station – which is underwater by the way.
(The tourists have escaped, in the meantime, whatever having been accomplished.)
Mike and Kay reach the safety of the control room, and Bouchard’s watchful capitalist eye. Then they all gasp an extended, slow-motion “Nooooo!” as the film’s worst special effect slowly nears:
It doesn’t play in mere images, but the motionless shark model zooms towards us. Glass shatters most unconvincingly as the shark freezes still like a Truffaut hero. Bouchard, being both black and the bad guy, would surely get himself a sub-Samuel L. Jackson death here, except there’s a working class black man nearby, so…that guy gets eaten instead. Bringing the death count up to…5. That’s…kinda unimpressive, considering.
Mike and Kay, somehow amongst all the members of the control room, are caught in…some room…some room underwater – it’s murky and unclear and poorly edited besides. And Brucette is caught in a window struggling to taste them – this’d be deadly to a real great white. While the soundtrack, by Not John Williams (AKA Alan Parker), shamelessly rips off Igor Stravinsky, Mike notices FitzRoyce’s British corpse dangling in Brucette’s feminine lips. (I call continuity error on that, considering FitzRoyce’s complete absence in the plainly visible preceding images of the beast, except…maybe she puked him up, in disgust at her movie’s quality.) Oh, and FitzRoyce has a grenade readily handy, just as we’d anticipated, so it’s a simple matter for Mike to employ some sort of “Gong Show” grabbing hook to pull the pin. Thus we’re showered with what is actually the film’s worst special effect (that’s saying something) – Mountains of shark gore and, er, its jaws!
Mike and Kay surface in the dolphin pool (unconnected to the lagoon), just as dawn breaks – a sure sign all is well. Mike assures Kay (and us) that everyone else is okay, despite a complete lack of evidence to confirm this. Then Kay, having witnessed several human deaths, has but one question – “Are the dolphins okay?” Let us not worry about Kay’s lesbian dolphins, for here they are in – Okay, sorry, this is the film’s worst special effect!
Sequel diminishment being what it is for misconceived franchises, Jaws 3-D couldn’t even equal Jaws 2 in success (no surprise there). It was even shut out at that year’s Golden Raspberry Awards. No respect! It’s clearly “MST3K” fodder – the thing is like a campy ‘50s monster movie, even down to the use of 3-D. But it’s funny, maybe ever more than Jaws 3, People 0 would’ve been, and we can all rest assured that this is the furthest Spielberg’s brainchild will ever sink, right?...Oh wait.
Related posts:
• No. 1 Jaws (1975)
• No. 2 Jaws 2 (1978)
• No. 4 Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
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