TOTAL FOOLS: Film Mag Says Jaws Overrated

To claim that Jaws lacks depth and is overrated is like chumming the water to Jaws fans, but that's exactly what a writer for a UK film magazine website has done.

Or, should we say attempted but failed to do. And we at The Daily Jaws don't think it's funny, don't think it's funny at all.

Polly should have perhaps done the proofing though as his case is about as watertight as Hooper's anti-shark cage. For starters when you are reeling off classic shark films, you'd perhaps add something different to er Sharknado or The Meg.

It's a stench greater than that of the decaying tiger shark on the Amity Island dock side, and that is because it is pure clickbait. All this review does is spout, scoff and make little digs. To quote Quint, it's not going to be pleasant.

They write: ‘The fact is, Jaws isn’t primarily remembered because it’s a great piece of cinema, but because it was (and is) highly profitable, making nearly half a billion dollars worldwide...to elevate the film above its box-office receipts feels like glory-hunting.’

Actually, Jaws is very much remembered as a great piece of cinema, it is as brilliantly constructed a film today as it was when it was first released in the summer of 1975. And that is in no small part to the wonderful editing by Verna Fields, distinctive direction by Spielberg and Bill Butler's glorious cinematography.

To paraphrase Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) in Jaws, when he is trying to explain why the art work ‘paint happy bastards’ have produced on the Amity Island board is anatomically correct to the Mayor (Murray Hamilton) in the presence of Chief of Police, Martin Brody (Roy Scheider). Jaws is the perfect eating machine of a movie.

Chris Watt, writing for The Daily Jaws in his article, Deconstructing Jaws: A Screenwriter's Reflections, says: Film. Movie. Call it what you will. Jaws delivers on all fronts. It has a lot of heart and just as much charm, surprising for a film that kills a child AND a dog in the space of three minutes. But it also has an art and skill at work that goes directly against its B-Movie origins. It’s one of the great cinematic gambles and it works completely.

And we couldn't agree more. Jaws never puts a foot wrong, it still has fantastic pace, still thrills and scares a little in all the right places and also makes people laugh in all the places that it is meant to do.

And crucially the shark, who only has four minutes screen time, still looks great. Like Alien after it, which after all was pitched as Jaws in Space, it taps into that primeval fear and when each and every person bringing that to life is working at the top of their game you can’t go wrong, critically, commercially or for longevity.

So, it's little wonder it sits at number 56 in the list of the top 100 American Film Institute films.

Again, completely missing the point, they go on to say: “Ultimately, Jaws is a decent exploitation flick that offers a quick trip to the edge of your seat and back, but little more...Jaws is just a film about a huge killer shark.”

It could also be read as about post Watergate paranoia or Vietnam, or masculinity. But, however you want to read Jaws - it certainly isn't just about a shark. If it were just a film about a shark, and not people, then it would be the Chrissie Watkins scene that would stay in the memory. Instead, it's moments like father and son Brody mimicking each other at the dinner table and the mesmerising USS Indianapolis monologue, delivered by Quint that lingers long after the credits have rolled.

Peter Benchley, and old pal of Spielberg, Carl Gottlieb, are listed as the screenwriters of the project but beneath the surface of the credits it is revealed that several different people helped stamp their authority on the project.

Benchley had two passes at the script and then the Pulitzer winning playwright (and scuba diver), Howard Sackler, was brought in to beef up the script. One of his greatest additions was the Quint USS Indianapolis monologue, which is now being mooted in various quarters as a prequel. There is a script floating about.

This one moment, more than any other, has been the one that has become fabled in who should take the credit for the powerful moment when Robert Shaw’s character retells his World War 2 shark encounter. Future Apocalypse Now and Conan scribe, John Milius, had a crack at it with Shaw himself, an accomplished playwright, also gave it a polish and honed it to the perfection you see on scream, depending on whose tale you listen to of course.

The great thing about the hours of waiting to film meant that the main actors (Scheider, Dreyfuss and Shaw) all got to hone their characters, got to know each other and also got to rework their dialogue with co-screenwriter, Gottlieb (who also played opposite the Mayor of shark city, Murray Hamilton) who often updated dialogue only 24 hours before the shoot, which perhaps goes someway to explaining why these three characters and their words – which even Tarantino would be proud of – and every nuance is so spot on and crisp over 40 years later.

He even says: Be highly suspicious of anyone who names Jaws as their favourite film.

Actually, no, we'll be more suspicious of someone who writes similar 'articles' about Indiana Jones being a jerk or how The Last Exorcism is a better film than The Exorcist. This isn't journalism, it's shock churnalism. Such film writing is more film wronging and does both professional and amateur film writers a huge disservice.

We've seen better constructed cardboard fins and people who allow such tripe to be written should be hung up by their buster browns.

The Daily Jaws