Jaws (Widescreen Anniversary Collector's Edition)

Jaws (Widescreen Anniversary Collector's Edition)
by Laurent Bouzereau, Steven Spielberg

List Price: $14.98
Our Price: $5.97
You Save: $9.01 (60%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.03 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details

DVD details

• Anniversary Collector's Edition
• Widescreen
• Special Features

DVD Reviews of Jaws (Widescreen Anniversary Collector's Edition)

DVD Review: Strange and somewhat unsatisfactory remastering of a classic
Summary: 3 Stars

This may seem picky, and many won't notice or care, but at the same time I don't appreciate them messing with a classic, especially when they don't offer a choice of a second audio channel with the original Dolby mix, as is given with many DVDs. And I don't hold with the trend when remastering movies today of making ordinary gunshots sound like cannon fire. (And one of the new gunshots is actually not synched with the smoke that comes from Brody's gun.)

If I've harped too much on the negative, I should say the video part looks beauiful (a cinematographer's small gaff with the aperture has even been fixed--I assume digitally--for this version) and the music has been, as I said, superbly restored. (This is particularly effective in the underwater music when they find Ben Gardner's boat.) But some key sound effects were dealt with poorly, and I'm surprised 1) the film received such cavalier treatment, and 2) nobody but me seems to have noticed.

The disc also includes several theatrical and TV trailers, a "making-of" documentary, and the usual goodies--production photos, storyboards, etc. There are outtakes (just a few and I know there were far more than this in the film) and deleted scenes, including three scenes that *were* included when the film was shown on network TV to add extra running time. But even one of these scenes is not complete on this DVD. I'm referring to Quint's original introduction, where he hums the Ode to Joy while a schoolboy plays it on a clarinet. That scene starts not where the DVD begins but with a shot of Quint exiting his truck, which has his name painted in big letters on the door. This is shown on the DVD as a production still but not in the deleted scenes themselves, for some odd reason. I just wonder why they give you *some* of a deleted scene but not all.

As for the story itself, a few things stand out: this film had some terrific dialogue and insightful scenes of family life, throwaway bits that show Spielberg once had a heart and soul. He'd never direct the film like this today, with 2/3 of it over before we get any real action and with endless pages of character exposition. Perhaps this is why I haven't been interested in a Spielberg movie in 20 years. The shark looks very fake in some scenes, but somehow we never seem to care--it still works. There are the usual maddeningly irrational plot points in a Spielberg film: why does the police chief go out with Hooper to look for the shark (when they discover Ben Gardner's boat)? Why does the mayor make such a big deal out of the fact that Hooper can't produce the giant tooth when there's a boat that's clearly had the crap chewed out of it by something? Why does the chief go out with Hooper and Quint at all in a town filled with professional fisherman who cold serve as deckhands? And once on the boat with an increasingly mad and unreasonable Quint, who is endangering everyone, why doesn't Brody put Quint under arrest and with the help of Hooper guide the Orca safely back to shore before Quint trashes it? Would a law enforcement officer really be so passive in that situation?

Well, the answer to all of these is because otherwise we'd have a far shorter film and less fun with the shark. Most people will just be thrilled to have Jaws in widescreen (this was the first VHS cassette I ever bought, many years ago, and the dub was horrible), and in larger-than-life sound. So am I, but I wish they'd preserved the original soundtrack mixdown as well. (Note: Watch for quick cameos by author Peter Benchley as a TV reporter and "Blues Brothers" director John Landis as a skinny denim-shirted fisherman who's one of those trying to win Mrs. Kintner's bounty.) (This review refers to the Widescreen 20th Anniversary stereo edition, NOT the DTS edition, which I have not heard and have no knowledge about.)

Description of Jaws (Widescreen Anniversary Collector's Edition)