While Shark Week will go on for a few more days, this is the end of Universal's Jaws series. We saw the magnificence of Spielberg, the mediocrity of part 2, and the moronic in three dimensions. How would part 4 handle the saga of the Brody clan?
It's December on Amity Island. Sean Brody (Mitchell Anderson) has graduated school and is now Deputy Brody. Martin (a photo is used) has passed away. Officially due to a heart attack but later Ellen (Lorraine Gary) swears it was fear. Fear of sharks, she insists.
Before she goes on that tangent, Sean has to leave as it seems a log has drifted into the harbor. Sean goes out that night and tries to bring the scrap in but that fear of sharks his mother mentioned? Seems there might be some truth to that, as a great white pops out of the water and takes Sean's arm off. The wounded deputy is quickly yanked into the water and killed.
This is enough to bring Michael Brody (Lance Guest) home. He's been busy with his work in the Bahamas, studying conchs. He brings his family with him too, wife Carla (Karen Young) and daughter Thea (Judith Barsi). Ellen is beside herself with grief, so Michael makes the decision to take her with them back to the Bahamas for Christmas. Why not? Warm waters guarantee that a great white would have a bad time, plus it would be silly to assume that sharks hold grudges, right?
On the final leg of the journey to the island, the Brody family meets their pilot. Hoagie (Michael Caine) is your typical dashing rouge and he hits it off with Ellen. Unknown to all of them though, that same great white has been following them and arrives at the island at roughly the same time.
The next day when Michael and his partner Jake (Mario Van Peebles) are studying conchs they encounter said shark. Both scientists figure "forgot what we've been studying and presumably paid to do, let's go shark hunting!". When Ellen hears this, she doesn't take it well and soon decides "it's personal!"
Lord, where do we even start? Sharks that hold a grudge? A shark that can go from New England to the Bahamas in a day? That fact that Michael apparently went from an engineer at Sea World to a conch expert? Sharks that explode?
I think the best quote about this is a paraphrase from Michael Caine "I never saw Jaws: The Revenge, which I'm told is quite terrible, but I saw the house it paid off and it's quite nice."
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