Revisiting Jaws 2 - Not a Bad Movie

While Jaws is a vastly better crafted film all the way around, I've always found Jaws 2 to be a much more fun and exciting watch.

No love for Keith Gordon or Ann Dingleberry?

I saw Jaws 2 before I saw Jaws 1. I prefer Jaws 2,

But I think this was the most shocking scene from Jaws 2 that I found unsettling as a kid.

Or my bulge in 3-D?

R2 Ann was pretty good, too, especially when they found her hiding in the dinghy and she screamed out, "Sssssssshhhhhaaaaaaark!"

Keith Gordon didn't have much to do in the movie.

R3 Even worse was the scene where Roy Scheider was wading into the ocean and her charred body sprung up.

I like that they made Ellen Brody an emancipated 70s woman in this one, selling Amity real estate.

David Elliott should've taken his shirt off in this one.

I mean when you compare it to Jaws 3 and 4....

‘Jaws 2’ Deserves a Legacy, Too

Is this the one where Ellen has hair like a Weimar lesbian?

Who?

I wasn’t crazy about it. It doesn’t have the snappy feel of the original and I wasn’t crazy about all the teens. And the helicopter scene was way over the top.

But hey, the director redeemed himself with “Supergirl”.

Years ago, the cast was in one of the bigger conference rooms at Chiller Theater in Parsippany, NJ.

My friend and I were just wandering around from room to room and wound up in theirs. It was just us and them.

They al stood up and smiled and said "Hello," obviously bored to tears waiting for people to show up. They seemed very disappointed we weren't huge Jaws 2 fans wanting to spend dough on autographed pictures.

A little later on, I wound up standing outside smoking with Donna Wilkes (well, NEAR Donna Wilkes.) She was complaining to someone about their lack of a crowd.

Speaking of the awful sequels that followed, I have always loved Tony Martin's review of Jaws IV, The Revenge, from Australian comedy series The Late Show in the 1980s.

Jackie should’ve been eaten instead of Marge. I liked Marge.

Mike wasn’t much of an actor, but he sure was cute.

I liked this one. Roy S. In his little shorts really did it for me.

I found the girl hysterically screaming to be annoying. But I also enjoyed Roy in his short shorts.

[Quote] - David Elliott, who played Larry, had the hottest damn ass, especially when he fell in the water and his jeans got wet and clung to him.

[Quote] - My favorite part was when the one teen girl got swallowed whole by the shark.

These are the DLest observations ever.

I remember the excitement in going to see it because I had been a superfan of the original, which came out the year I turned 12.

I enjoyed it but I sat there waiting for it to really kick in. It ended and I was disappointed.

I realized eventually it wasn’t the shark or the surf or the acting or plot details. It was all in the WAY the story is told. Movies are stories and nothing matters more than the way the story is told.

Jaws 2 has perfectly workmanlike direction but it lacks the Spielberg touch.

I saw this one on VHS before I saw the original. Apparently this one was supposed to be much darker and have more a focus on Ellen Brody's new real estate career and the character played by Stefano DiMeara was supposed to have a larger part. I think it's okay that it didn't turn out that way.

Why didn't Ann Dusenberry's career take off? She was the star of a blockbuster film (Jaws 2); starred in a high-brow literary adaptation that was a television event (Little Women); Co-starred with a Comedy icon (Life with Lucy) as well as yet another icon of film, tv, and state (Murder She Wrote). Now that's the CV that even Julia Roberts would be envious of, and yet nothing since 1992. What a waste...

Somebody who worked on Jaws 2 said that the original director got fired because he fired an actress who was the girlfriend of a Universal honcho. I always wondered if said girlfriend was Ann Dusenberry as she had a contract with Universal at the time.

You can’t compare the original to part 2. I think part 2 is a great movie (in an entertainment sense) and I enjoy it very much. It has some really great kill sequences and I liked the teens. I loved the ending with the electrocution of the shark. Wasn’t the rumor that this shark was the “wife” or the mother of the one in the original? LOL

They were really stupid to not stick to this formula. Beach, kills, teens, shark, the end. They could’ve gone dark for part 3. Part 4 is so bad it’s amazing ANYONE greenlit it. Imagine scores of people saw that script and went, “sure, the shark follows them to the Bahamas for revenge.” JFC

It would’ve been interesting to see what Spielberg would have done with this script.

I think Jaws needed one more good kill before they set out to kill it.

I read a review at the time that said one felt compelled to root for the shark.

The beginning at the Holiday Inn Holidome makes me nostalgic. I loved staying there on family trips to Florida-indoor pool, miniature golf, and an arcade! Mom and Dad loved letting us kids run around and play all day while they could hang out at the lounge.

Spielberg must've had a licensing agreement with Holiday Inns-the Freelings stay in one at the end of Poltergeist.

Mike was played by Mark Gruner, who also appeared at Clark Tyson, Jan’s crush in season 2 of The Brady Bunch. Although he’s basically a block of wood in Jaws 2, he was pretty good as a young psycho murderer in an early ABC Movie-of-the-Week, A Little Game.

Ed was played by Gary Dubin, who appeared on The Partridge Family as Danny’s friend, Punky Lazar.

Jackie played Maclean Stevenson's troubled daughter on Hello Larry but was replaced with a pretty girl.

^she must’ve been replaced because she had tits like a sparrow

I saw it in a theater when I was 11 or 12 years old and people were laughing

The director, Jeannot Szwarc, just died in January. Jeffrey Kramer, who played the deputy in the first two "Jaws" movies, and Jane Seymour paid him nice tributes.

Vincent Canby NY Times

Some of the action sequences have been well staged, but they've been dropped into the film so indiscriminately that Jaws 2 never builds to a particular climax. It simply drones on and on and on, like a television movie.

It had one of the greatest posters and advertising taglines ever.

But as a film it really disappointed. SPOILER: They kill the shark by tricking it into biting a live electrical wire!

It was a solid film. Very fun. The shark being electrocuted was amazing.

The teaser poster was way better than that watercolor shark. It looked so bad.

Regarding the opening scene, would a shark really attack two people?

R36 Yes, it has happened many times.

Is this the one where he eats a helicopter?? Come on!!

I believe TV legend Michael Learned has a cameo role as the woman driving the boat of the waterskiing girl. It's an uncredited cameo I believe.

I have to laugh at how the school band plays "Downtown".

No one should trust a Mayor who dressed that badly.

Further to R11

No that was Jaws 4: The Revenge.

That was Jean Coulter, R39

That cunty "he's LOOKING for sharks" know-it-all girl is a DL legend.

Jaws should’ve had more kills like this one. This movie had great kills and the constant suspense with the teens on boats was very well done.

Ha ha the band's next number is "The Girl from Ipanema"

Sometimes the most beautiful girls are the loneliest.

That's a crock of shit!