Review of Jaws the Revenge

Introduction

There are two things you can rely on in this life. One, sharks will do their proverbial business in the sea, and two, every Jaws movie will be progressively worse than its pedecessor.
That said, I would place the original Jaws up there amongst my top 100 movies, from it`s ground breaking cinematography and effects to the tense but darkly comical script. The whole thing worked, production values were high and so was the budget, for the day. The same can also be said for Jaws 2, but like I said it wasn`t as good as the original. Then came Jaws 3, in 3D if you saw it theatrically, which lost the plot and the audience as it bombed worldwide.
In 1987 came Jaws - The Revenge, a desperate attempt to jumpstart the franchise once more but like I said they only get worse.

Video

The picture is in widescreen, enhanced for 16:9 TVs. I say only widescreen as there appeared to be some slight cropping during the opening titles and therefore doesn`t seem to be in its true aspect ratio. The picture is reasonable with some macro blocking and grain evident, not as good as it could be for its age. The movie has a very made for TV feel in both production and execution.

Audio

A very poor transfer in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo. Sound does distort on a number of occasions and the low end bass extension hasn`t been separated to the two channels. What were they thinking at Universal, not even a Pro-Logic mix, shame. Just in case any of you are thinking of a language option when you return to school, there is a German dub too.

Features

Trailers for Jaws 2, 3 and a theatrical trailer for the main feature, enough said.

Conclusion

I now have to admit Jaws is present in my own DVD collection and I had seen 2 and 3 before but had managed to dodge "the revenge" for a good 14 years. This film never gets praised, trust me, and as I watched for the first time, in complete disbelief at was unfolding on screen, I was tempted to switch it off and put on Deep Blue Sea, honest.
One scene towards the end sums up this movies low budget and bad production. After destroying the shark the team are left thrashing about in the sea miles from anywhere. This illusion is quickly shattered when you notice, in close up shots, water lapping up against the background backboard painted skyline.
And even if this movie did have a full blown 5.1 soundtrack it wouldn`t be enought to rescue it from Titanic depths.
Pure sharks preverbials. The movie is bad beyond belief, the story is pure hokum and in the words of Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future 2..."The shark still looks fake!"