I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

In the second sequel to Jaws, Sea World's new multi-million dollar underwater attraction is terrorized by a 35 foot great white shark, putting both staff and the public in danger. It's up to Mike Brody (Dennis Quaid) to uphold the family's legacy as shark fighters and save the day.I was "fortunate" enough to see Jaws 3-D in the theater back when it was originally released in 1983. I didn't care for it back then and, if anything, I found it even worse as I re-watched it last night. There are so many problems I have with the film I really don't know where to begin. I guess I'll start with the 3D. As best as I can remember, the 3D effects weren't overly impressive back in the day. But watching in 2D, they're even more annoying. The floating arm near the beginning of the film, for example, looks just plain old stupid. The rest of the effects are equally bad. The shark is laughable. The shark from the original Jaws, made years earlier, is so much better. As bad as the effects are, the rest of the film is even worse. The film's logic is pretty much non-existent, the characters are pretty much unlikable, and the script is pretty much a dull mess. There's not much here to like. Watching last night, I'm shocked that Sea World actually let the makers of Jaws 3 not only use their facilities for filming, but allowed them to use the Sea World name. Sea World must have believed in the old adage that there's no such thing as bad publicity. The film makes the staff and ownership of Sea World look like a bunch of bumbling idiots who can't be bothered to give two shakes about customer safety. Speaking of "can't be bothered", I can't be bothered to go into any more detail on Jaws 3-D. I'll end this by saying that, for me, this is the worst of the Jaws series. I know most people rate Part 4 the worst. While I agree that it's one stinker of a film, at least Part 4 is entertaining. Jaws 3-D is just bad.

If you can handle this concept, this film may just turn out to be a fun, little rainy afternoon popcorn flick. I mean, it's filmed in 3-D for starters. If you're going to sit there and critique the cheesy effects and expect them to be on par with the original Jaws, then prepare yourself to be drastically let down. It's flawed, but a fun film. Better than Jaws 4 in my opinion.

JAWS 3-D gets a lot of undeserved hate. The film isn't nearly as bad as most people seem to think it is. It's actually a fun and enjoyable piece of early 80s cinema. The score is great, mixing old themes with all new ones. It really fits the setting well. Most of the characters are likable, interesting, and just plain funny (which adds to the enjoyment of the film) and the story itself makes for a fine old- school monster movie. A lot of the underwater scenes are dark and grainy but that just goes to enhance the atmosphere and make it even more spooky. All of the actors play their parts well. Dennis Quaid is great as always. Lea Thomson, Louis Gossett Jr., John Putch, Simon MacCorkindale, and P. H. Moriarty all do a fine job. Bess Armstrong is probably the most annoying of the bunch but over time she's grown on me. I don't find her to be quite so bad anymore. Overall, nobody does a bad job. The first half of the film has the reputation of being boring because there is limited "shark action," but to me this is the best part. This is the period that sets the mood and allows us to get to know all of the characters and builds suspense toward the eventual encounter because we know the shark is trapped in the park. By the time the second half starts and the "shark action" really kicks into overdrive, everything has been established, the stakes have been raised, and it just makes it all the more interesting. A lot of the 3D effects look extremely corny, especially seeing them in 2D, but that just adds to the film's overall charm. Comparing it to today's slick, ultra-glossy, extremely fake looking CGI and I greatly prefer the old cheesy effects. At least they're unique and charming rather than lifeless and completely devoid of any emotion at all (like CGI). But of all the film's complaints, the effects seem to be what gets the most scorn, and I believe that to be the main reason why the film has the reputation it does. Most people can't seem to get past the peculiar effects. The shark itself doesn't look amazing, but I definitely prefer it to the shark from either 2 or 4. But at the end of the day, I guess the bottom line for all the effects is if you're specifically looking to criticize the film for it, you'll definitely have plenty to work with. But if you're able to just sit back and enjoy the film for what it is and look past its superficial flaws, you'll have an extremely fun and enjoyable experience. The key is to watch this film on its own and not right after the original or any of the others. Let's face it, the original JAWS is not only the best film in the franchise, it's the greatest shark movie ever made and one of the best films period of all time. Most films aren't going to measure up. The second film isn't terrible but it's definitely a major step down from the first and can be quite boring to get through, especially on repeat viewings. The fourth movie (Revenge) is a notoriously bad facepalm-inducing catastrophe of epic proportions. It literally killed off the franchise and isn't worth talking about beyond that. As a whole though, 1, 2, and 4 seem to be the real trilogy of this franchise (though I personally prefer it as 1, 2, 3). As is though, JAWS 3-D is the outlier in look, feel, and setting, but boy is it better for it. It's far and away better and more interesting than either sequel, by a long shot. It isn't boring and it certainly isn't awful. You just have to see it for what it is.... a fun, cheesy, 80s monster movie with uniquely odd effects. If you give it a chance, it may grow on you.

By now the series had descended into laughability, something at a high with this cheesy 3D take on the killer shark theme made to cash in on the short-lived 3D craze of the early '80s. Immediately we're bombarded with those blocky yellow titles that fly out of the screen and get to watch lots of things fly out at us throughout the film's course. Objects include jets of water, a harpoon, the inevitable shark and my favourite, a cheesy severed arm which lingers on the screen for minutes. None of these are as much fun as they were in, say, Friday the 13th Part III. All of these effects are made hilarious by the bad special effects, which are so unrealistic that it looks like little, if any of the film was actually filmed underwater at all! The link with the previous films is so tenuous that you have to wonder just why they bothered at all to associate it with them - surely a clean break would have been a better bet? This time Dennis Quaid plays the far too-young hero, and it's hard to believe that he went on to quite a successful career after his bad performance here. At least he isn't alone, as just about all of the cast are stupid and unconvincing in this film - with the possible exception of an under-used Louis Gossett Jr, who is pretty cool as the chief of the theme park who has to face up to the consequences of his playing with nature.The people are a clichéd bunch as per usual - there's the clean-cut girl, the "risky" younger brother who gets himself in trouble, two imported British actors as a pair of hunters who plan to trap the shark, plus loads of forgettable youngsters who fade from the memory the instant the film finishes. The plot is merely a string of clichés, and you can pretty much guarantee that what you see here has been done before - there's even a group of people being trapped in one location with time running out, a disaster movie staple if ever there was one. The rubber shark is overused here too, making it unrealistic and in places ludicrous.The whole idea of a complex being attacked by sharks is done a lot better in the recent hit thriller DEEP BLUE SEA, which at least doesn't take itself too seriously and remains frequently exciting. Exciting is about as far as you can get from JAWS 3, which also totally fails to build up any suspense that its predecessors sustained - here, at the climax, you just think "that's it?" instead of sitting back in satisfaction with the previous two films. You may think that the idea of a mother shark coming back to avenge the death of her young is a clever one, but go back twenty-three years previously and you'll notice it was already done in GORGO anyway.But perhaps I'm being too harsh. Whilst bad, JAWS 3 isn't quite the worst film ever made. Some scenes are cool - I loved the close-up of the slimy, worm-infested mutilated head we see in one instance, which undoubtedly helped to earn this film a 15 certificate. It's also watchable on a schlocky level, and sometimes reaches the level of bad '70s disaster flicks like METEOR and others. The best I can say about this film is that it's rarely boring (only at the beginning, which takes half an hour to start). You may think that things couldn't get worse after this, but JAWS: THE REVENGE followed four years later...