[Nerdspresso] Jaws 2 Chomps Cheesily with a Righteous '70s Attitude

Share Your Beloved Pet Memories

Huck’s Heavenly Hangout offers Southpoint Access readers the opportunity to share stories and photos of pets who have passed on.

Southpoint AccessWes Platt

By Jeff Stanford, Special to Southpoint Access

I just love it when the shark eats the helicopter. This outrageous bit happens about halfway through Jaws 2, the cash-grab sequel to the original masterpiece. A malevolent great white shark terrorizes a group of adolescents day sailing off Amity Island. They’ve been set adrift after driving their boats into each other following the shark’s initial assault. 

It now ominously stalks them, occasionally enjoying a tasty bell-bottomed snack. Gone is the apex predator of the first movie. Cacharodon carcahrias is now an aquatic boogeyman pursuing hapless teens. Suddenly, a tiny chopper with the Harbor Patrol arrives to tow them to safety. When the pilot - who looks suspiciously like Will Ferrell in an Abe Lincoln beard posing as the Coast Guard - starts to lift off, the shark emerges from the depths.

It chomps down hard on the pontoon. There’s a lot of very dramatic music as the leviathan pulls the little copter below. The teens shriek in horror and duck from flying debris. Here’s when you discover that this flick has gone righteously off the rails. It knows it can’t compete against the majesty of its precursor. Director Jeannot Szwarc (Somewhere in Time, 1984’s Supergirl) must have realized that he didn’t possess the imagination or innovation of Steven Spielberg. 

He just filled these frames with popcorn-dropping, drink-spilling, shout-at-the-screen WTH moments. Even more so than when the shark outruns water skiers or gets maimed in a freak flare gun-ignited gasoline explosion, this helicopter stunt tells you that all bets are off. Why try to top one of the best movies ever made, right? Screw it. Let’s just have a good time! Like Grease 2 or Superman III, Jaws 2 is one of those goofy sequels that you love even when it buries the memory of its superior predecessor in an avalanche of nacho cheese.