Jaws IV - The Revenge (1987)
Starring: Michael Caine, Lorraine Gary, Lance Guest, Mario Van Peebles
Director: Joseph Sargent
Synopsis: A quite amazingly stupid film... hilariously awful
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

 

There are bad films.

There are very bad films.

And then there is Jaws: The Revenge.

It occupies a category entirely of its own.

This is one of the true wonders of the cinematic world—so mind-numbingly, stupefyingly, magnificently ridiculous that ordinary criticism simply ceases to apply. It is perhaps best remembered for its immortal tagline:

"This time... it's personal."

That single sentence tells you everything you need to know.

Apparently the shark has now developed an intensely personal vendetta against the Brody family. Having exhausted the local marine population, it decides that revenge is the only logical course of action. Countless potential meals are ignored because, by this stage in the series, the shark apparently possesses not only razor-sharp teeth but also an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Brody family tree.

It wants Brodys.

Only Brodys.

One can almost sympathise with the poor creature.

The Brodys have become such an interminably miserable family that even a great white shark feels compelled to intervene.

Leading this parade of gloom is Lorraine Gary, reprising her role as Ellen Brody.

Quite how an actress of such limited ability found herself carrying a major Hollywood production is perhaps less mysterious when one remembers that she happened to be married to Sid Sheinberg, then the head of Universal Pictures. Whether that influenced her casting is a matter of history to debate, but there can be little argument about the result.

Her performance is astonishingly wooden.

Worse still, the screenplay places her firmly at the centre of the story, asking the audience to invest emotionally in a character who spends much of the film staring mournfully into the distance while repeatedly informing everyone that she knows the shark is coming.

She is, unfortunately, correct.

Then again, so is the audience.

Things scarcely improve elsewhere.

Mario Van Peebles attacks his role with boundless enthusiasm, delivering a performance of such exaggerated Caribbean exuberance that he somehow manages to make Lorraine Gary appear positively restrained. It is difficult to decide whether he believed he was making a thriller, a comedy or a tourist promotion for the Bahamas.

Then there is Michael Caine.

Legend has it that he accepted the role because he needed the money to renovate his house. Caine himself later joked:

"I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house it built, and it is terrific."

Frankly, one cannot blame him.

Watching an actor of Caine's calibre trying to generate romantic chemistry with Lorraine Gary is one of the more surreal experiences the film has to offer. Their relationship culminates in an excruciating slow-motion sprint along the beach before arriving at an equally syrupy embrace that is apparently intended to sweep us off our feet.

Instead, it induces involuntary laughter.

Yet all of this pales beside the film's crowning moment of madness.

Convinced that the shark's murderous obsession is directed solely at her family, Ellen Brody reaches the extraordinary conclusion that the only solution is to sacrifice herself.

Yes...

she offers herself to the shark.

Apparently the beast will then consider the score settled and retire peacefully into the Atlantic.

It is a moment of such staggering absurdity that one almost has to admire the sheer audacity of the screenplay.

The climax only adds to the delirium.

The vast ocean suddenly appears to shrink into what resembles a modest swimming pool, with miniature-scale effects and awkward staging exposing the film's painfully limited resources. What should have been an epic confrontation instead resembles an overenthusiastic day at a marine theme park.

It is difficult to imagine how the series that began with Steven Spielberg's masterpiece could have ended here.

And yet...

there is something strangely fascinating about Jaws: The Revenge.

It is so spectacularly incompetent that it almost becomes entertaining by accident. Every misguided creative decision, every laughable plot development and every earnest performance combine to create one of those rare cinematic catastrophes that demand to be witnessed firsthand.

As a thriller, it is hopeless.

As a sequel, it is an embarrassment.

As unintentional comedy...

it is magnificent.

Jaws: The Revenge deserves its place among the all-time great bad movies. It is a film so catastrophically misguided, so gloriously inept and so relentlessly preposterous that ordinary words like "awful" simply aren't enough.

It has to be seen to be believed.

And if you possess a taste for truly, gloriously terrible cinema...

I recommend it without hesitation.

Not because it's good.

Because it's one of the most spectacular pieces of cinematic nonsense ever committed to film.