I currently feel it's also going to be a Jaws 2 year as it's longer still since I watched that one.
Jaws 2 is the sequel that disappoints me most on rewatches, because unlike the third and fourth it's the one that could have been great if it hadn't taken so many wrong turns
Well, last night I did it and dived into
Jaws 2 for the first time in at least three years. It could be as long as four or five years!!
I'm glad we've been talking about the film here in the last few days, flaws and all, because I subconsciously went in with fairly low expectations. The result was that I really enjoyed myself. The first act in particular is very enjoyable but, looking at the timer around the time the Orca sequence happened, I was surprised to find we were only thirty minutes in. Even though it was pleasant to watch, it felt like longer, whereas
Jaws always feels far shorter than its two hour running time.
When watching
Jaws just a couple of days before, I mixed things up by consciously focussing on the background of scenes to see what was going on which made me appreciate all the layers. What I found was that this just didn't work with
Jaws 2. While the setups are nice and many scenes are attractively framed, the focus is strictly on the people in shot. Even in crowd scenes, there are just hundreds of well-behaved, if bland, extras. It's essentially a television approach, where we really see only what we need to see. Jeannot Szwarc throws in the occasional visual bit of fun
*, but it's mostly quite static and orderly. Action sequences with boats aside, it's a far less kinetic film than
Jaws, and I particularly miss naturalistic touches such as overlapping dialogue (think of Brody getting the phone call about Chrissie's disappearance while Ellen sorts out Michael's bleeding hand in the background). This is a key part of what makes
Jaws, Jaws, but which
none of the sequels use.
That said, my choice to deliberately focus on details did yield some things I'd never spotted before. Most notably, for the first time I noticed the bottle green bomber jacket of Brody's which was passed on to Tina after finding her in shock (he wrapped it around her shoulders) was then worn by Ellen who had it draped over her shoulders in
her final scene where she ticked off Len Peterson and then looked out to sea. I myself have two that are very similar to it, but I now crave Brody's jacket - even though Tina got snot on it when he found her hiding on
Tina's Joy.
Mysteriously, when Brody finds the stranded teens in time for the big finale, he is now wearing a
different jacket (similar to a safari jacket) in a lighter shade of green. Where did this come from? Beneath his original bomber jacket he had on just a grey t-shirt. Neither Ellen or Hendricks wore or carried anything that resembled this second jacket. Was it just lying about in the police launch? Perhaps a standard police issue jacket kept especially for confronting sharks? Is it meant to be the same bomber jacket (which is now very clearly on shore by this time)? I'm confused.
It's good news/bad news with the kids this time. It goes without saying that Jackie has to be the most annoying character in the whole franchise. The screaming. The histrionics. Last night, chants of "Feed her to the shark! Feed her to the shark!" could be heard from the O'Drama sofa (to no avail, sadly). It struck me, too, that most of the kids overacted when it came to the final act. All the shark had to do was wave a friendly fin from a mile away, and they were "Oh my Gaaaard"ing and screaming like nobody's business. I know he's a kid and one should cut a break, but
Jaws 2 Sean is an incredibly annoying little git. He feels too knowingly precocious and rather stage school-y. He'd never have been cast in the original where the kids felt like kids rather than child actors.
That said, I found the young ensemble surprisingly engaging in the first part of the film. Keith Gordon and G. Thomas Dunlop seem to get better each time I watch. Gary Springer, too, is very engaging, as is Billy van Zandt. Even characters who usually feel more peripheral, such as Patrick, Brooke and Lucy really worked for me. I hadn't spotted the scene in the bar before where Patrick and Lucy can be seen in the foreground drinking from their glasses facing one another, but with elbows entwined. As it turned out, the bar scene (usually one of my least favourites) was great for background watching, and is one of the most kinetic, natural-feeling scenes.
I also had fun spotting where locations cut from Martha's Vineyard to Florida. Granted, it's usually pretty obvious due to the different landscape and sand colour, but it's pretty well done.
The scene where Brody steps from his vehicle to the car park, into the Navarre Holiday Inn and inside to Ellen is one impressively huge sweeping shot that captures most of the cast (this week is the first time I'd spotted Hendricks was present at the event).
* During the montage the man taking the photo of the big bottomed mother and daughter at first holds his camera vertically, then moves the camera aside to look them up and down before deciding to hold the camera horizontally in order to fit them in. It's sizeist, and would probably never fly today without protest, but it's a cute little moment that shows the cheeky European humour Szwarc brought to the table. 
).
