By The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking blockbuster Jaws.
I had my first wet dream about Kelly Le Brock. You know, the bombshell created by two horny teens in the comedy Weird Science before anyone knew that a computer actually has no such powers? She was truly a thing of beauty: leggy, buxom and oozing sex appeal. I recently saw her being interviewed on TV and, without sounding rude, she has aged…big time. I expected a few wrinkles and blemishes, but she looks like a pair of old leather boots that have been stitched up time and time again in a vain and unsuccessful attempt to preserve the original look.
The reason I tell you all this is because the feeling I got from watching this one-time object of my most private, ahem, moments, was similar to the feeling I got from watching Jaws on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. Namely, I don’t remember it looking like that.
The first major “event movie” now looks as dated as any film from that period, and is an utterly disappointing watch. I’m not just talking about the big plastic fish either, though that does look ridiculous. Steven Spielberg’s directorial style does not hold up well at all, and when placed up against the likes of Hitchcock and Scorsese, his status as a visionary looks extremely shaky. Indeed, my favourite parts of Jaws happened either by accident or against Spielberg’s better judgment. It’s said that he disliked the brilliant score by John Williams; the impressive shark-cam shots were only put in because the shark kept on breaking down and they needed more footage; and the famous line “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” was an adlib by Roy Scheider. In short, Spielberg landed on his feet and still produced something that sucks.
The story itself is simplistic to the point where you wonder how Spielberg managed to get a full two hours out of it. Big shark kills people. People kill big shark. It’s a fifteen-minute short at best. It’s the padding in the film that really drags it down. In a film that should be electrically paced from beginning to end, Jaws stumbles tediously along – even I found myself shouting, “Bring on the mechanical john dory!”
Jaws definitely has its place in movie history, and there’s nothing that I can do about that, but what I can do is implore you to leave it in the past. It’s just got no fright left in it after all these years. Frankly, it’s no scarier than watching an interview with Kelly Le Brock. Damn you, Father Time!
Want to read more from The Butcher? Check out his trampling of Black Swan, his slaying of Gladiator, his bashing of Chopper, his scratching of I’m Not There, his exploding of Interstellar, his take-down of Marvel Studios, and his carve-up of that other cinematic shit-show Citizen Kane.
