25th Favorite Movie - Jaws

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

The first time I saw Jaws, I was about eleven years old. It was in the middle of the summer, there was nothing to do, and so my mom brought home a few movies on VHS from the public library for me and my friends to watch. I think we had just gotten our first VCR. Kinda funny, huh... to think that now we have Tivo and DVD and movies on the internet and I didn't have a VCR in my house growing up. Anyways, I started watching and got really frustrated and bored because they were not showing the shark. So I found the fast-forward button and just fast-forwarded to all the "good parts" with the shark attacks and didn't bother with the rest.

I don't think it needs to be said, but I will say it anyways: this is not the best way to watch Jaws.

Some of the best scenes in this movie don't involve the shark at all. The scene where the shark hunter tells his sea farin' tale is one of the best. Or the one with the body underwater that is guaranteed to make anyone who hasn't seen it before jump. Or the suspense for the first half of the movie... when you know that there will be an attack, but you don't know which one of the people in the water it will be. Stephen Spielberg is just a master, at everything. I have always liked directors like Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola but right now I would have to say that my two favorite movie directors are Stephen Spielberg and Spike Lee.

Anyways, if you haven't REALLY seen this movie before, maybe you've just heard all about it or done the tram ride at Universal Studios or caught a few minutes of one of the zillion showings on TNT... check it out. But not now. Wait until the summer, in the height of tourist season, like August. I have a friend who preaches the importance of watching certain movies at a certain time of year, and this is one of them. Two others are American Graffitti and Stand By Me, which he always watches toward the end of the summer.

Oh, and as for Jaws 2, Jaws in 3-D, and Jaws 4... like Ocean's 12, they never happened.