Forget JAWS 19...Here's JAWS 3D!

The internet is ablaze with the presence of the phony baloney and admittedly uproarious trailer for the fake feature JAWS 19.

The preceding laff riot was produced as part of a marketing campaign to support the 30th Anniversary Blu-ray and DVD release of Robert Zemeckis’ timeless (har) comedy/fantasy classic BACK TO THE FUTURE and it’s equally witty and worthy sequels. For fans of the mind-bending BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II, JAWS 19 is significant as Marty (Michael J. Fox) strolls by a theater playing this fictional flick, which was meant to open on October 21st, 2015. Funny stuff…

Alas, one of the very real sequels referenced in the spoof is even funnier…

Director Joe Alves’ 1983 dimensional dud JAWS 3D is about as erect a middle finger to Steven Spielberg’s immaculate 1975 original as you can get. Which is not to say it’s not a fun flick; it most certainly is, and it boasts a rather stirring knock-off John Williams score, composed by Alan Parker (no, not the director of ANGEL HEART and THE WALL, thank you, a different Alan Parker). In it, the Brody boys, last seen as teens in the sturdy but soulless JAWS 2, are now all growed up, with the elder Mike (played by Dennis Quaid) now a marine biologist at SeaWorld and his little brother Sean (John Putch) now a goofy cowboy who’s terrified of the water and – in a roundabout tie-in back to BACK TO THE FUTURE – dating a lass named Kelly, played by Marty’s mom Lea Thompson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMlx33ov82c

At the core of JAWS 3D is a gloriously flat stereoscopic salute to everyone’s favorite ocean-life Guantanamo Bay, the dolphin death camp known as SeaWorld, framed by a wickedly goofy plot that has a biggie-sized shark infiltrating the park and feasting on a few divers (in one of the few decent 3D gags, a victim’s severed arm comes floating off screen into your lap). Mike and his gal pal and fellow biologist Kathryn (Bess Armstrong) capture the beast and try to turn the Great White into a half-assed attraction at the park but the poor thing dies of stress and blowhard park manager Calvin Bouchard (Louis Gossett Jr., sandwiched between AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN and IRON EAGLE) shakes his fists and curses the commercial fates.

Problem is, the now dead shark was only a baby and, when mama finds out that Jr. met his fate at the mitts of some damned dirty humans, she busts her 10 tonne, 30 foot ass through the park’s iron underwater gates and proceeds to lay 3D waste to everyone and everything in her path.

JAWS 3D boasted special effects that were closer to special defects.

JAWS 3D is a goofy romp that suggests the shark may or may not have followed the Brody’s to Florida, an idea that is hammered home with even greater ham in the legendary but actually not-really-all-that-bad JAWS: THE REVENGE. The film – whose script was penned by series regular Carl Gottlieb and none other than the greatest dark fantasy writer of all time, the late Richard Matheson – is a hodge-podge of warmed over JAWS character arcs (Gossett Jr. is essentially Murray Hamilton’s callous mayor while Armstrong and Quaid both channel Roy Scheider’s Brody AND Richard Dreyfuss’ Hooper), the setting is silly, the dialogue goofy, the climax jaw-dropping (slave dolphins to the rescue!) and the 3D generally sucks. The film was released at the tail (har) end of the 2nd mini-3D craze (which utilized the split-stereoscopic process wherein two images were squished onto one frame and a special lens was placed on the project to blend the left and right polarized image) and was obviously tricked out with dippy “gotcha” gags in post production. The scene where the blue-screen toy shark (which looks like a cut-out moving across a still photo) comes through the glass window of the underwater lookout is a knee-slapper and the flying “jaws” themselves that hurtle to the screen after the shark has been dynamited (spoiler, sorry…) are just plain tacky.