[REVIEW] Jaws

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Jaws is 40 years old, and they held two special screenings of it in Cool Springs, Tennessee, our favorite spot for beers, movies, and all things enjoyable.

We bought our tickets online, and early, figuring that with just two shows, surely it would be a madhouse.

It wasn't. The theater was 1/2 full, if that. I either wanted a small, reverent crowd, or a loud, boisterous one for this. Instead we got neither, we got the norm, the middling, quietly whispering to each other throughout the whole movie bozos that you could have found in Jurassic Park World the next theater over.

Here is the thing about Jaws.

I mean, the coolest-and-yet-worst story about Jaws is that it was from a nobody director with a nobody cast, so they scheduled it for the summer because back then nobody went to movies in the summer. And then it became a big hit, and the "summer blockbuster" was born, and because of that, every year we get to enjoy movies with $300 million budgets, which make billions of dollars, and are terrible.

I have a sense, if there's anyone who hasn't seen Jaws, they might assume it was bad because it was the movie that caused all these other horrible movies to happen.

Oh well.

But here is the thing about Jaws:

I've seen it ten million times. I can quote every line along with the movie, from start to finish. That might be an exaggeration, but not much. And I know every little bit of trivia. This was the scene they had to reshoot because there was a sailboat in the back. Robert Shaw was drunk in this scene. This is the one with the animatronic shark that they had to retrieve from the bottom of the ocean because it sank. Robert Shaw was drunk in this scene. That's Richard Dreyfuss' body double. Robert Shaw was drunk in this scene.

And, more than any other movie, unlike any other movie, you can know that it was a punk kid director, with a bunch of nobodies, half the cast (and probably most of the crew) were drunk the whole time, nothing EVER worked, it was basically a disaster from first to last, you can know ALL of this...

...and yet, even 40 years later, and countless viewings, it's still spellbinding. It's still hilarious. It's still exhilarating. And most incredibly of all, it's still fuckin' scary.

Anyone from that generation could live to be 110. If you ever swim in the ocean on a warm summer day, you'll always hear it, somewhere in the very back of your mind...

...buuuuudump. ...buuuuudump.

FIVE (*****) STARS out of five. A perfection, of sorts.








The movie started with no previews, just a brief recorded shot of someone introducing it. The following two hours flew by quicker than any other two in my life. And when it was over, I could have sat right the fuck there and watched the whole thing again.

I love Jaws.

[Robert Shaw]

Jaws is 40 years old, Here is the thing about Jaws.

Robert Shaw was drunk in this scene. Robert Shaw was drunk in this scene. Robert Shaw was drunk in this scene.

Knowing your operation, if I were you... I'd be worried about making me happy.