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Jaws
25th Anniversary Collector's Edition (Dolby)
(2000)
 If
there weren't rampant stupidity in the world, there wouldn't
be movies like "Jaws," the 1975 film by Steven
Spielberg that was the highest grossing movie of all-time
until "Star Wars" and "E.T." claimed the
title in succession.
Here's the problem as the movie
presents it: There's a shark in the water and it's eating
people. Here's the solution as I see it: Don't go in the
water. Naturally, the next thing you know, the entire town of
Amity is in the water, which is kind of like drinking the
contents of your gas tank and going inside your burning house
to take a pee. Even the protagonist, Sheriff Brody (Roy
Scheider), a transplanted New Yorker who's afraid of the
water, ends up splashing about. Fine, I'll root for the shark.
Director Steven Spielberg sends
out Brody, shark expert Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and
boat captain Quint (Robert Shaw), a man with an Ahab complex
so extreme that he considers defrosting fishsticks to be a
test of his manhood. At this point it seems reasonable to ask,
"Has anybody heard of an elephant gun?" Brody is out
there shooting at the shark with what looks like a cap pistol
while Hooper and Quint are comparing scars.
Imagine the hero Brody would
have been if he had thrown Hooper and Quint overboard and
taken the boat back to dry land: He would have saved himself
from having to land a lucky shot while perched perilously on a
sinking mast, and would have saved millions from having their
brains devoured by "Mr. Holland's Opus." |
