Reviews from People Magazine:
Jaws 2
The moral still is: If you're swimming and hear ominous cello music, you are about to be eaten by a giant shark. About everything else is the same, too, though the classy flourishes added to the 1975 original by Robert Shaw (already gobbled up), Richard Dreyfuss (other fish to fry), and director Steven Spielberg (not interested) are gone. The same dopey mayor is worrying about the tourist trade, another great white shark has heard about a good feeding ground off Amity, Long Island, and Roy Scheider, fulfilling a commitment to Universal, appears again as the police chief. He is to be commended for not just walking through, though his character is hopelessly addicted to staring at the ocean. The problem is that the best gimmicks were used the first time around, and despite a couple of tense who'll-be-main-course-and-who'll-be-dessert sequences, the $25 million sequel turns out to be only ordinary.
Jaws 3
Some fishermen think all they have to do is toss a hook overboard to land a big one. The producers of this sequel once-removed obviously figured they just had to toss their fish into the water to come up with a huge catch at the box office. Sorry, fellas; it won't float. Well, actually, it floats all right, but the giant shark in this case--it's a thirty-five-footer--doesn't swim especially well. Maybe the mechanical monster that played the shark in Jaws sequels was getting old (the fins are always the first to go). Or perhaps it decided to try for a more meaningful interpretation of the role. But this great white shark doesn't even motor fast enough to catch up with a bikini-wearing cutie on water skies. It just trolls leisurely along until it has a victim cornered, then gulps him down. Not much else happens. Dennis Quaid and Bess Armstrong think they have the shark penned up in Sea World (the Florida marine center, playing itself), but the shark seems to feel it has dropped into a fast-food establishment and nibbles on a few peopleburgers. It takes them without cheese, but given the caliber of acting in this film, it can't help but get a few bites of ham. Quaid, as chief engineer of the park, is more nondescript than heroic, while Armstrong is on the gushy side. She's a marine biologist so conscientious that moments after the shark has swallowed two of her colleagues, her only concern is that her dolphins have survived. Lou Gossett Jr., playing the park owner, affects a terrible ghetto accent, perhaps hoping he won't be recognized. Director Joe Alves, the original Jaws production designer, is so bland his work is barely noticeable. Jaws 2 was a sorry enough sequel; this one (shown in 3-D in theaters) really wears out the idea's welcome. The fearsome shark now seems more like the fish who came to dinner.
Jaws: The Revenge
Steven Spielberg;s original Jaws 12 years ago was so scary it actually kept people out of the water. About the only thing this amateurish third sequel will keep people out of is movie theaters. Under director Joseph (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) Sargent, the original concept has degenerated into a water-logged slasher picture. When the movie begins, the Long Island sheriff, who in the form of Roy Scheider, battled the great white shark in the original (and first sequel) has died of a heart attack. Lorraine Gary, who played Scheider's wife both times, gets to fry the big guy this time. When one of her sons is snatched off a boat and devoured, Gary decides the shark has a grudge against her family. Her other son, Lance (The Last Starfighter) Guest, a marine biologist, invites her to the Bahamas, where he lives and where, he tells her, great whites never go. As it turns out, even great whites know it's better in the Bahamas. Guest seems more concerned, however, with a land shark, Michael Caine, who is circling in on his mother. It's only one of the film's flaws that Guests's jealousy of Caine is never resolved. After her granddaughter almost becomes a shark snack, Gary sets sail alone to meet the finny villain face to fish. That insult to plausibility is bad enough, but the confrontation abruptly ends just as it gets going, with Sargent desperately inserting footage of Scheider killing the shark in the first film. For all the chomping, this movie has precious little bite.