RedemptionDenied's Reviews > Jaws

3.5 stars - rounded down.

"You're gonna need a bigger boat..."
That line was improvised by Roy Scheider on the day of shooting.

Loved the movie, which is based on Peter Benchley's 1974 novel of the same name. At first, I didn't favour either the movie or the book (which is different to the film), but the further I got into the novel, the less I enjoyed it. So, for me, at least, the movie was definitely superior. I enjoyed reading the book, for the most part - but couldn't get used to some of the characters patois, and some of the sentence structure didn't work for me. It didn't flow as well as I would've liked. The Kindle edition has a few typos: waman (woman), gelling (yelling), shift (shirt), etc, so that was a bit annoying, as well.

A Great White (Carcharodon Carcharias) brings terror to Amity Island - when a young woman (Christine Watkins) is killed after going skinny dipping in the early hours. Her remains are found by Officer Leonard Hendricks, washed up on the beach, after Brody, Hendricks and her date, Tom, go searching for her. Well, they find her. What's left of her, anyway. And they proceed to have a puking contest.

When Brody realises, she was killed by a shark - he wants to close the beaches, but has opposition from just about everyone, more or less. He's on his own. The towns economy is not doing so well, and with the beaches closed - well, they need the summer tourists to bring in the revenue or the town will die. The Mayor, Lawrence (Larry) Vaughan gives Brody an ultimatum: open the beaches or lose your job. So it becomes open season. Then another victim is claimed by the shark, and he has no choice but to close the beaches, indefinitely, whether he has a job - or not.

He eventually gets help from a fisherman, Quint, to hunt down and kill the shark, which is going to cost double the usual rate.

I didn't really care about Ellen Brody's infidelity with Hooper, which was going to be a subplot in the movie. Thankfully, it was left out. I did like Daisy Wicker, though. She was quite funny, whilst conversing with Brody at the dinner party - for Hooper. Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden were originally the first and second choices to play Matt Hooper in the film, but they turned it down - and Richard Dreyfuss got the part.

Anyway, all they have to do is turn the shark upside down, to cause it to go into 'tonic immobility' - a state of paralysis. Some families of skilled Killer Whales 'hunt and eat' Great Whites for their livers. A female Orca was observed holding a Great White upside down for fifteen minutes in the waters around the Farrallon Islands, off the coast of California. Although, both species have their advantages and disadvantages.

As for the film, it's the seventh-highest grossing movie of all time in Canada and the US - with an estimated 128, 078, 800 admissions. The budget was $9 million and it took $470.7 million at the box office. Nice payday. It was the first movie to gross over $100 million at the box-office; highest grossing movie of all time - at least, it was until Star Wars was released two years later. Yeah, well, nothings forever.

The reason we don't get to see the shark much in the movie (it didn't fully appear until 1 hr 21 mins into the movie), is because the mechanical shark (Bruce) rarely worked. It was mainly non-functional. It's named after Spielberg's Lawyer, Bruce Ramer. I wonder what he thought of that? There was some real shark footage used in the movie, but it was used sparingly.

The fictional town of Amity was shot on location at Martha's Vineyard. It took three days to shoot the opening scene. A Martha's Vineyard fisherman, Craig Kingbury (non-actor) appears in the movie as Ben Gardner. Spielberg' got the job of directing, because of his movie - Duel.

In conclusion: I liked it for the most part, but my interest started to dwindle the further I got into the story - and it finished, too abruptly. Some scenes in the book were better than the movie, and vice versa. Some of the deaths were different in the movie; the way they played out, and the Killer Whale on the beach wasn't in the book. Overall, I preferred the movie. It had an excellent cast.