JAWS III (1983) One star
In the movies, three is most often not a magic number.

In the movies, three is most often not a magic number.

In the movies, three is most often not a magic number.

Were the second and third entries less interesting than the first?

Of course, they were and that principle applies to sequels like, for example, JAWS III, a long, long way down from the original JAWS directed by Steven Spielberg.

JAWS: THE REVENGE pretended JAWS III — originally titled JAWS 3-D — never happened and that’s something I would like to do with both movies.

Nah, I take it back, because I enjoy both movies for their epic badness. I’ve watched both whenever I’ve had the chance and I hope that I will always be able to marvel once again at their incredible ineptitude.

In the business, they have what’s known as the Idiot Plot or that’s when everything would be figured out much sooner if the characters were not complete idiots.

In JAWS III, it takes our protagonists incredibly long to figure out that our Great White Mother’s inside the park.

I chortle when female protagonist Kathryn Morgan (Bess Armstrong) says the following dialogue, “Overman was killed inside the park. The baby was caught inside the park. Its mother is inside the park.”

This dramatic moment instead plays comedic.

Honestly, though, I live for that moment partially because earlier Morgan explains the bite radius, a plot detail essential to any JAWS film. Right, JAWS: THE REVENGE?

There’s a couple more favorite moments in JAWS III that I will try and get through sooner or later within this review.

Now, however, I’ll go through some of the problems with JAWS III one-by-one. We already hit the Idiot Plot, the film’s biggest problem.

— Weak characters: The original JAWS featured three great characters in Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider), Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and Quint (Robert Shaw). Brody returned in JAWS 2 — Universal had Scheider by the balls and made him do JAWS 2 — and there’s not a single great character in JAWS III or JAWS: THE REVENGE. Not a one.

— Weak shark: In JAWS 2, the shark stood out more than any human character, including Sheriff Brody and Mayor Larry Vaughn. Especially them darn insipid teenagers. Not in JAWS III. The Great White Mother in JAWS III does not approach the ridiculousness of the fourth JAWS entree, but a plot that has a mother shark taking revenge for her son, why that’s just preposterous and plain out-of-character for a shark. I might owe ORCA THE KILLER WHALE (1977) an apology.

— Weak big moment: Let’s briefly set this one up. It’s late in the movie and Morgan and her love interest Mike Brody (Dennis Quaid), park manager Calvin Bouchard (Louis Gossett, Jr.), and two park technicians are inside the control room. Of course, here comes the Great White Mother and it’s obviously going to crash through the glass in full-on 3D glory. Here it comes … here it comes … here it comes … 2D anticlimax! I don’t know what else to say but this scene’s even more laughable than our great-shark-inside-the-park-revelation scene, especially with Morgan and Brody’s priceless slow-motion reactions leading up to the shark’s crash.

— Them damn dolphins: Yes, Cindy and Sandy, who are worse than our teeny boppers from JAWS 2, believe it or not. Granted, to their credit, Cindy and Sandy figure out the plot faster than anybody else in the movie. Cindy and Sandy (a.k.a. “The Shrieking Dolphins”) went up against some tough competition at the 1984 Razzies for Worst New Star — Finola Hughes in STAYING ALIVE, Reb Brown in YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE, Loni Anderson in STROKER ACE, and the grand prize winner Lou Ferrigno in HERCULES.

Okay, okay, that’s enough for now.

I’ll close on what I consider to be the great mystery from JAWS III.

Does anybody out there know what the following dialogue even means: “You tell Shelby Overman for me he can take a flyin’ leap in a rollin’ doughnut on a gravel driveway, you hear?”