JAWS 3-D (1983)

JAWS 3-D (1983)

Tagline : The third dimension is terror… 

In this movie Sea World has a new facility opening up, with state of the art exhibits and new attractions. The man made lagoon where the coolest stuff is, opens out to the ocean. It doesn’t take long before a baby shark sneaks in. Something goes horribly wrong when Sea World tries to make it an attraction and the mother shark is not having it. This isn’t your 25 foot JAWS or JAWS 2 shark, its 35 feet long and that is going to scare the crap out of you in 3 freakin D!!!!!! 

This one has so little to do with the first 2 movies in the series that you have to really focus on the dialog just to recall that two of the characters are Chief Of Police “Brody’s” sons from JAWS. What’s even crazier is that we have a VACATION type situation here where the actors playing “Brody’s” sons in all 3 movies are not the same actors. It’s actually quite frustrating that none of these kids look even remotely the same. Unfortunately continuity was a real issue in the late 70’s and 80’s due to lack of foresight and failure to sign proper franchise contracts, even if you thought you wouldn’t make one.

Mike Brody is played by Dennis Quaid. I gotta say, I freakin love Dennis Quaid. He reminds me of someone that could have pretty easily have stepped in for Harrison Ford as INDIANA JONES, but didn’t need to of course. Bess Armstrong is pretty good as Kathryn Morgan and she seems to really enjoy working with dolphins. Louis Gossett Jr. plays a corporate boss in this. I have loved this guy’s acting for decades, he’s been in WATCHMEN the show more recently, but my favorite roles of his were probably in the IRON EAGLE series. He was also amazing in ENEMY MINE (which also had Dennis Quaid in it). Lea Thompson (from BACK TO THE FUTURE) plays Kelly, Sean Brody’s love interest in the movie. So casting for this thing wasn’t an issue at all, it was the script lacking meaningful dialog that could have made this movie a lot deeper and haunting than it was or maybe self-aware if they wanted to go a different direction.

 

I first saw this movie in 3D in the theaters with my mom at the age of 10 and was pretty blown away. I didn’t care about dialog back then I just wanted to see stuff coming out of the screen right into my eyeballs. Over the  years, I have come to know JAWS 3-D as a well-acted but badly scripted movie that tries but much like JAWS 2, never reaches “mind-blowing” status. It also sadly does a horrible job special effects wise. This might have had something to do with the 3-D rendering challenges, but man oh man it’s terrible. There are a few frightening images in this movie including a decomposing body after a shark attack, but for the most part this is less horror and more thriller. The timing of the only slow motion shot in the movie also bothers me now, but didn’t when I was kid. It’s also possible some of the issues with this movie are related more to having an over-ambitious plot and the fact that the idea was originally pitched as a bit of a spoof concept. The ending also feels like someone on the production crew traveled through time 10 years into the future, and stole the idea from a FREE WILLY poster. 

I give JAWS 3-D a 4 out of 7. For most this is probably a 3 out of 7, but for me it was an inventive out of the box movie for this series that was fun in spite of its effects limitations. If it had been shot today we might have ended up with something a bit more like JURASSIC PARK only with a shark or sharks as the main attraction. 

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