Movie Review: Nat Geo's New "Jaws @ 50" Documentary Pays Fascinating Tribute to Hollywood's First Blockbuster

Next week will see the televised premiere of the new feature-length documentary Jaws @ 50 from National Geographic, and Laughing Place was provided with access to an early screener for the film. Below are my thoughts.

Right off the bat I should make it clear that Jaws is my favorite movie ever made. I’ve seen it countless times, I’ll never get tired of it, and it still makes me cry tears of deep, deep appreciation every time I watch it. It should also be made clear that Jaws has been the subject of several documentaries previously, including The Making of Jaws in 1995 and (perhaps most famously) The Shark Is Still Working in 2007. There’s even another, albeit unauthorized, Jaws documentary coming out this year for the movie’s 50th anniversary entitled Jaws: Making a Splash In Hollywood. But Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story boasts– as its full title suggests– the direct involvement of Steven Spielberg and was produced in partnership with his own Amblin Documentaries studio.

Jaws @ 50 was directed and produced by documentarian Laurent Bouzereau, who has become something of an in-house behind-the-scenes guru for Amblin over the past few decades, helming informative looks at the making of everything from The Lost World: Jurassic Park to A.I.: Artificial Intelligence to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and beyond. In fact his first credit as a director was for the aforementioned The Making of Jaws for the film’s 20th anniversary laserdisc release in 1995. Most recently, I admired Bouzereau’s biographical documentary Music by John Williams, which chronicled the life and career of the modern movie era’s most beloved and admired musical composer. And now Laurent has turned his cameras back toward Jaws, in this latest doc featuring a lot of new interviews with Spielberg (who of course directed the original film), surviving cast members like Lorraine Gary (who played Ellen Brody), and the family of late author Peter Benchley, who penned the influential 1974 novel on which the movie was based. Benchley’s wife Wendy is even credited as a producer on the film, having become a marine conservational advocate in the wake of the book’s success.

A nice chunk of the film is spent undoing– thanks to Wendy’s advocacy– some of the damage that Jaws did to the public’s perception of sharks, but it’s also great to hear from Martha’s Vineyard locals about what it was like to live on the island during the film’s notoriously lengthy production at Amity’s real-life location. Then we spend a good amount of time with contemporary filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), Jordan Peele (Us), J.J. Abrams (Super 8), Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich), Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future), Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous), and James Cameron (Titanic) as they discuss what Jaws means to them and how its enduring legacy has impacted the film industry over the past five decades. Even Mary Poppins Returns actress Emily Blunt pops up to swear fealty to Jaws and talk about her pilgrimages to locations on the Vineyard, and Star Wars creator George Lucas remembers having visited the lot where the mechanical sharks were being constructed and immediately knowing what a big hit the movie was going to be. And speaking of mechanical sharks, a big part of the story of how Jaws came together involves some of the on-set disasters (see the title of one of those previous documentaries listed above), and Jaws @ 50 manages to dive into that tried-and-true story again here without feeling like it’s retreading common ground too often.

Indeed, the great thing about Jaws @ 50 is what’s fresh: the new interviews, the unearthed archival footage and photos from Spielberg’s personal collection– much of which I had never seen– and a perspective on the film that only half a century can bring. What appealed to me less was the stuff I had seen before: for example, actor Richard Dreyfuss (Hooper) only appears through recycled talking-head footage, even though we know he’s still alive and doing interviews. But the positives far outweigh the negatives here, and I especially liked the thematic analyses of the movie like Jordan Peele talking about how its true villain isn’t really a shark, but unbridled capitalism (apparently Fidel Castro– a fan of the novel– agreed). I also enjoyed hearing from actor Robert Shaw’s (Quint) son Ian during a section detailing tensions between actors on set, and I found the section where Spielberg talks about his PTSD following the film’s troubled production especially moving. I’m sure it’s a tricky thing to approach a topic like Jaws that has been tackled many times before, but Bouzereau does so deftly in Jaws @ 50, combining the old and the new in a fascinating, entertaining way that reminds us once again why the 1975 mega-hit became known as Hollywood’s first blockbuster in an era of summertime moviegoing.

Jaws @ 50 will premiere on Thursday, July 10th via National Geographic. It will become available for streaming thereafter via Disney+ and Hulu.

My grade: 4 out of 5 crushed styrofoam cups