Movie of the Week: Jaws (1975)

For the first time since it defined the term "summer blockbuster" in June of '75, Steven Spielberg's breakout hit Jaws is the hottest ticket in town*. You can hardly go anywhere without seeing JAWS 50 merchandise - I visited one of my favorite bookstores recently, saw a huge display, texted my mother a picture, and said, "What do you already have?" - all over the shelves, go online without seeing another retrospective (like this one!), or open up Disney+ without seeing Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story splattered across the homepage.

*Well, that's only sorta true. They aren't rereleasing the film until the end of August (why so late in the summer?), but the sentence doesn't flow that way. I hope to make it to the theater myself to see it for the 50th time.

Despite it being a National Geographic documentary (I have a newfound affinity for Nat Geo), I was going to skip that one. But when my mother texted me that I had to watch it, I checked the Letterboxd page and saw that it was directed by Laurent Bouzereau, whose book and documentary work I've enjoyed before, so I turned it on. And it was really good! While a good chunk of it was stuff I already knew, I enjoyed the filmmaker testimonials (holy cow, Soderbergh loves this movie) and the times it would just turn into a Nat Geo documentary and nerd out about sharks for a few minutes. Sharks are cool!

For a long time, I foolishly thought Jaws was boring. Probably because I was a kid and stupid. But when they did one of their countless rereleases a few years ago, I went to see it on the big screen and totally got it. I'm not as obsessed with it as others (Soderbergh) are, and it will never be my go-to Spielberg, but between my reawakened appreciation, its never-ending presence on Film Twitter, and the energy around the golden anniversary, I could come up with a pretty good list of reasons why it's great...

Actually, let me try that: the John Williams score, the opening, the poster, how much my mom and I talk about it, how much everyone who likes movies likes it, I've never read the novel but I like Peter Benchley's book The Deep, the real life locals as extras, the shot, the other shot, the other other shot, how I think about it every time I go to the beach, the underwater shots, the stories about the mechanical shark malfunctioning, the part of the Universal Studios tram tour when the shark jumps up, the fact that it's like barely in my top five Spielberg and it's still this good, the way Quint talks, Richard Dreyfuss even though I don't really like Richard Dreyfuss, how Chief Brody always wants to do the right thing, how the mayor really doesn't, I can't believe they made a Broadway play about the making of this movie, the countless movies about the making of this movie, how it just sings on the big screen, the tote bag that Taylor bought my mom that has the logo all over it, sharks are cool, it's just a great movie

How's that?