Jaws III (1983)

Jaws III seems to accelerate the aging of the Brody kids a little bit to make them the focus of this first Roy Scheider-less entry in the franchise. Well actually Mike Brody (here played by Dennis Quaid) is the principle focus here, he's in his twenties designing and installing various enclosures and underwater gates at Sea World (yeah, I don't know if I buy it either) while younger brother Sean (John Putch) just stops by for a visit, despite his understandable fear of water. Of course an aggressive great white shark makes it through the gate and Mike's marine biologist girlfriend Kay (Bess Armstrong) wants to save it, creole park manager Calvin Bouchard (Louis Gossett Jr.) wants to exploit it for profit, and the Brody boys know better from experience. It's kind of interesting that Sea World would agree to licensing their names use in this picture, given that its about a disaster at one of their parks, but I suppose the thinking was any publicity is good publicity, thinking that no doubt changed decades later after the release of another movie, Blackfish. A young, pre-star Lea Thompson appears as a bubbly love interest for Sean. If you see this movie you might notice that the film holds some subpar special effects shots for unusually long periods of time, that's because this movie was released in theaters as Jaws 3-D and wanted to give audiences time to appreciate its effects, which I doubt ever looked right. This film's not great, but honestly works better then it deserves to. **1/2