It's amazing to me that it took me until now to actually watch Cruel Jaws, but it's also not quite true. Because I had seen Cruel Jaws many times before now. It just wasn't called Cruel Jaws. It was called Jaws. And Jaws 2.
Infamous, and rightly so, Cruel Jaws is a film from director Bruno Mattei that basically rips off Jaws for almost every minute of the runtime. Every main plot beat feels familiar, even if it's moved around to laughingly make it seem less like an exact copy (e.g. the girl heading into the water at night while a guy is unable to keep up with here . . . that happens here, but it isn't the opening sequence). And if it's not taken from either of the first two Jaws movies then it's taken from the source novel. Mattei may have a writing credit, alongside Robert Feen and Linda Morrison, but it's really Peter Benchley who should be named as the main creator here. Whether or not he would want to be is a different matter.
I'm not going to mention the plot. It's pretty much the plot of Jaws. Seriously. The whole thing is very familiar, which makes it somehow more endearing and goofy than it otherwise might have been, and the scenes that most closely rework the iconic Jaws moments tend to be the scenes that feel the most fun. If there's one thing to say about Cruel Jaws, it's fun.
As for the cast, Richard Dew and Gregg Hood are two leads (the former an aquarium owner, the latter a fish expert), there's a wheelchair-bound girl named Susy (played by Kristen Urso) who is one of the most irritating wheelchair-bound characters, and one of the most irritating children, I have ever seen in a film, and other main characters are played by Scott Silveria, Richard Dew, Norma J. Nesheim, and, of course, a large fake shark. None of them are great, but they're all impressively ready to emulate famous moments from Jaws (my personal favourite being the scene in which a shark is caught and Hood's fish expert character argues that it might not be the same shark they're after . . . and there's only one way to be sure).
It seems unfair to give Mattei any praise for his direction so I won't. He spent a large part of his career making Italian rip-offs of successful American movies and I don't think many people would ever rush to celebrate him as a great auteur. He does deliver something unforgettable though, even if it's in the form of a cinematic collage of other movie moments, and I know a lot of movie fans who will enjoy this film as much as I did, as long as they're already aware of its reputation.
I've already spent more time on this review than the credited writers spent working on the script. There's nothing else I can say that hasn't been said already, although I will remind anyone about to watch this to keep their ears open for the part of the music score that seems ready to deliver the full Star Wars theme. Hey, why stop at pilfering dialogue and movie moments if you can also use a ready-made bit of memorable music to soundtrack things?
Awful . . . but also kind of brilliant.
5/10
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