<3 Jaws

I love Jaws, like Jaws 2 and appreciate Jaws 3 for its total ridiculousness. Jaws 4: the revenge does not exist in my world, mostly because I hate the first 10 minutes and the fact that they kill off one of Brody's sons. Small children are not supposed to die in disaster movies unless they are totally superfluous character or really annoying (the same theory applies to small yappy dogs). Jaws IV breaks the rules and is thus stricken from my list of good shark/disaster movies.

Anyway, AMC continued its reign of awesomeness (they created Mad Men) by showing Jaws and Jaws 2 back to back last night. Jaws is a far superior movie for a lot of reasons, but Jaws 2 is kind of a forgotten B-movie masterpiece. So, some things I love about Jaws 2:

1) Jaws 2 was not directed by Stephen Spielberg, but the average person is totally unaware of this fact. It was actually directed by some woman named Jeannot Szwarc, but you can sometimes trick people into thinking Jaws 2 is way better than it is by reminding them that SPIELBERG was attached to the first movie. This practically makes it Saving Ryan part II in their minds.

2) The movie lightly treads around the idea that the shark is on some type of revenge mission. This idea is totally ridiculous (at least, I hope it is..) and yet only the annoying fish lady disputes this idea. Then it's kind of dropped, but it seems pretty obvious since the first 2 people killed in the movie died at the site of the sunken Orca- i.e. the place shark #1 was blown to bits.

3) A lot of the people die in sets of 2. Could this be because it's Jaws 2? I will have to test this theory next time I watch Jaws, but I think this means the movie has a sense of humor. First the 2 divers get eaten, then the 2 women on the boat (well 1 in the boat, 1 out..and only 1 gets eaten). 2 teenagers are terrorized in their boat..and after that my theory starts to die a little because only 1 of the teenagers gets eaten and then a whole bunch of people die..but it was a good idea.

4) Sex, drugs and rock & roll = death. I love when movies play by the rules.