By Jerry Roberts
October 28, 2002

Watching Jaws the Revenge is like spending two hours at a convention for village idiots. You can't believe what you are seeing but by the time it's over you more or less come to expect anything. Anything, that is, except Jaws 5.

The movie begins with an effective scene as Sean Brody, now having followed in his late father's footsteps and become sheriff of Amity, goes out in a boat one night to move a log that has overturned a buoy. No sooner is his task complete when he is attacked and killed by a shark as the sounds of a nearby children's choir drowns out his screams. That's really the place to stop with this movie because every other scene has you slapping your forehead in disbelief.

Sean's mother Ellen (Lorraine Gary) becomes convinced that it was not a random killing, nope, she believes that this shark is an ancestor of the one that her husband Martin killed in Jaws and that it is targeting the Brody family. Now, given the rational that a shark does have the capacity to hold a grudge, what makes her think that the shark would know one human being from another? Maybe they just have that peculiar Brody scent or perhaps they give off that certain Brody glow that only sharks can see. Even then, why don't they just throw in the idea that the shark planted the log out near the buoy to lure Sean to his death? Hmmmmm?

Anyway, having established that inane theory, Ellen moves to the Bahamas with her son Michael, a marine biologist who has been working at SeaWorld. He seems sensible enough because he seems willing to humor Ma especially when she starts babbling that the shark what killed Sean has followed them to the Bahamas. Yeeeeeeeeeah!!! A shark followed a plane from Martha's Vinyard to the Bahamas, I want to see a shark with those navigational skills!

Now, aside from being delusional, Ellen apparently has visions. She wakes up from a dream about events that happened in Jaws, events that she was not present to witness. This comes in one of those tired old scenes where a person wakes up from a nightmare only to wake up from another nightmare.

Thrown into this pile of manure is Michael Caine as a pilot named Hoagie (yes, Hoagie) who falls in love with Ellen and more or less buys her theory and wants to help her. It should be said that Caine's reputation has never lived down Jaws the Revenge even after 15 years, especially since, on March 30 1987, he missed his opportunity to accept his Supporting Actor Oscar because of his commitment to this movie. Yeesh!

The climactic scenes are a series of one grand act of stupidity after another leaving me asking the inevitable: Why does Ellen figure that the only way to stop the madness is to sacrifice herself to the shark? What does she expect to happen after she becomes fish food? Why does Hoagie crash his plane into the water so he can stop her? If Ellen figures that the shark would follow her from New England to the Bahamas why doesn't she just move the family to Kansas? I'd like to see what the screenwriter would come up with for that one.