Reached a milestone in parenthood yesterday. I actually watched Jaws with my girls for the first time! To watch such an amazing film through the eyes of your children is wonderful. As a grownup, I've seen this movie dozens of times and know every scene like the back of my hand. So, watching it with my girls gave it a new angle and meant the joy of seeing them react to it was my ultimate entertainment; and I wasn't disappointed. I remember watching this film for the first time when I was a kid with my parents and can only imagine there glee at my brother and I being absorb and petrified at the same time.
Jaws was released in 1975, and I was born in 1979. This fantastic film was already 4 years old when I arrived on the planet. But I wouldn't see it until I was roughly 10 years old. So we're talking 1989. By then this movie would have been fully established in cinema history as a true classic. I'm now 43, and have enjoyed Jaws many times through each decade of my life. It's what I refer to as a perfect movie 🎥 The filming, sound, acting, tone and dialogue are perfect. Not to mention the iconic theme music 🎶 That theme was something the girls already knew about in their build up to watching the greatest shark 🦈 movie on the planet. As soon as the film opened, with the camera swimming shark-like through the dark shallows of the Amity Island coastline in the opening credits, coupled with that ominous theme leading the way, Jaws had them, hook, line and sinker, so to speak 😂 They were scared, nervous and excited all at the same time. It was finally happening for them. They were going to watch Jaws. The legendary shark movie that they had only heard rumours of in the playground, as well as hearing its disembodied theme tune in a school play once, but never having a real sense of why it was deemed so scary to so many.
This all started when my daughter, aged 8 at the time, asked if she could watch the Meg. A terrible film starring Jason Statham. I was mortified. 'No,' I said, if you're going to be introduced to a shark movie, it has to be the one that kicked them all off. The one all shark movies wished they could be. Unfortunately/fortunately my wife nipped the whole scheme in the bud sighting she was only 8. I conceded. Over the next couple of years my daughter kept bringing up, the Meg and begging me to let her see it. But I was strong. Until some parents from my kid’s school took their children, who are a year younger than mine, to watch the 3D version at the cinema recently. This was it, I thought, I begged my wife to let them see it and fed up with the tireless asking for two years, finally gave me the thumbs up. Jaws was a go! 👍
So here we are, the rooms dark, the home projector is running on the 100inch screen in my man cave and the music is loud. We're back in 1975 as far as I'm concerned, and the girls and I were not disappointed in the slightest. The film still stands up after all these years. The girls watched through their hands as the first victim screams tirelessly for her life, as she thrashes around in the moonlit sea. They jump out of their skin when Ben Gardner’s mutilated head appears underwater. With the blanket over their eyes, they semi-miss Pippin the dog, the kid on the Lilo, the man in the "old ladies" pond and even Quint's classic grewsome death. But they loved every minute, even with their own 'blanket' censoring 😆
I looked at the star ratings on Prime when it was over and couldn't believe my eyes, 5 stars with over 12,000 reviews. 8.1 out of 10 on IMDB. Then it dawned on me, this is a film from 1975. For all the special effects and money in film these days, no shark movie has ever come close to Jaws. With the exception of Jaws 2 🤣 It's still, after almost 50 years, the godfather of shark films. It's the gift that keeps on giving, and I guarantee you, it’ll be scary in another 50 years’ time.
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