Jaws 2 (1978) |
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Jaws 2 (1978) |
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| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Action |
Featurette-Making Of Featurette-John Williams Featurette-Keith Gordon Featurette-The French Joke Deleted Scenes Storyboards Gallery-Photo Theatrical Trailer-2 Trailer-Jaws 3, Jaws: The Revenge |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 1978 | ||
| Running Time | 111:23 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (83:50) | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Language Select Then Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Jeannot Szwarc |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Universal Pictures Home Video |
Starring |
Roy Scheider Lorraine Gary Murray Hamilton |
| Case | Amaray-Transparent | ||
| RPI | $36.95 | Music | John Williams |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) |
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English Swedish Norwegian Danish Dutch Finnish German |
Smoking | No |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
Jaws 2 takes us back to the town of Amity, with Police Chief Brody (Roy Sheider) in charge of a content little resort island. The sun is out, the sky is blue and the good people are paddling in the beach after putting the terror of Jaws behind them. Why are we here then? Maybe because there is more than one shark in the world, and Amity seems to be good eatin' according to the "in" crowd of sharks in-the-know. No one can believe that recent deaths could possibly be the result of another shark, and when Brody pleads his case to the town leaders, including the Mayor (Murray Hamilton), he is summarily dismissed and fired. However, tragedy hits home when two of Brody's son's are terrorised, along with a group of local teenagers, and it's up to him to save them.
This is really a very effective sequel considering that the original is deemed a classic by most. However, it is also a very different movie, with a different focus; the audience already expects the shark and won't be as easily shocked. By taking the now familiar shark and making it a threat to the main character, the movie increases the amount of harm the shark can do; Brody's obsession with the shark costs him his livelihood and reputation, and almost his two sons in with the deal. This is a more personal movie, and one which I enjoyed very much.
The movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.
The transfer is generally very sharp and clean once the opening underwater shots are out of the way. Indeed, it looks very good for a movie of its age and was a nice surprise. Grain was not a problem for the bulk of the movie, only occurring now and then. Shadow detail was very good. Although not quite up to contemporary standards, it was not problematic.
Another pleasant surprise was the bold and often striking colour saturation. The image often had a very nice sense of depth helped a great deal by the clean and sharply defined colours, with no chroma noise to be seen.
It was a shock to me to find the bitrate for this transfer dipping as low as 2 megabits per second. As a result, MPEG artefacting can be seen almost all the time if you look hard enough for it, and sometimes if you don't. A few scenes suffered quite obviously from the low bitrate, and almost the whole film had a slight hard horizontal pixel structure which I have never seen from a major distributor before. This did not greatly deter from the look of the film on the whole, and only those with larger displays will notice the effect. I firmly believe that this simply not should happen, and that the feature transfer should not be compromised to make way for extras; rather, the extras should be placed on a second disc as is becoming increasingly popular. Again, the effect is generally mild and those with small(ish) displays will not be affected. Film artefacts were on display all through the film as small white spots, though they were not especially distracting. There were instances of vertical and horizontal aliasing throughout the movie, though again they were not particularly distracting.
A sampling of the English subtitle stream revealed it to be quite faithful to the dialogue.
This disc is RSDL formatted, with the layer change occurring during Chapter 14 at 83:50 minutes, and went almost unnoticed.
| Sharpness |   |
| Shadow Detail | |
| Colour | |
| Grain/Pixelization | |
| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
| Film Artefacts | |
| Overall | |
There is an English and German Dolby Digital 2.0 track, providing monaural sound. I listened with pro-logic mode on, as I do for all mono movies.
Dialogue was well presented, with good tonality. There were instances of obvious ADR work, though this is expected in almost all movies. There were no lip-sync issues.
Again, John Williams returns for this sequel and reprises his universally-known Jaws theme and expands upon it. Given that the soundtrack is mono, I must say I felt somewhat cheated in this department, as the great composer's work is crammed into one channel almost sacrilegiously. The sound is clean, with limited low frequency extension and clear highs, though it failed to make the same impact as the recent swell of re-masters which have 5.1 soundtracks (for instance, the original). It is fair to say that it lacked the impact and effectiveness which I would have expected, and it seemed to take somewhat of a back seat. This is, of course, a great shame.
The surround channels were not used.
The subwoofer ended up watching the movie with me in total silence, though he did get a bit frightened towards the end and turned himself off in fear.
| Dialogue | |
| Audio Sync | |
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| Surround Channel Use |  |
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| Overall | |
A nice collection of meaningful extras is provided. All four featurettes include the full subtitle list as provided for the movie itself.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
Jaws 2 is a very good sequel, and a very good movie in its own right. The picture is very good, though with a low bitrate resulting in some minor problems. The sound is mono though serviceable. A definite keeper.
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| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Toshiba SD-900E, using RGB output |
| Display | Pioneer SD-T43W1 16:9 RPTV. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. |
| Amplification | Sony STR DB-930 |
| Speakers | Front & Rears: B&W DM603 S2, Centre: B&W LCR6, Sub: B&W ASW500 |