It's only after watching this that you realise just how crucial to the success of the first film Robert Shaw was. This is not the worst sequel I've seen by any means, but without his gnarled and charismatic "Quint", we are left with a pretty mundane effort from all concerned. This time our hungry finned friend has a group of young sailors - including, of course, the Brady bunch - "Michael" (Mark Gruner) and "Sean" (Marc Gilpin) firmly in it's sights. This necessitates their sheriff father (Roy Scheider) having to defy his own loathing of the water to try and rescue them. Director Jeannot Szwarc tries to mix it up a little, but there is just too much inevitability about the ending; and the screaming hysterics of the weans - especially the truly irritating "Jackie" (Donna Wilkes) started to get under my finger nails quite quickly. The photography is good, and some effort has been made to disguise the more mechanical elements of the shark attacks, but the calamitous fire pan to fire scenarios recycle themselves once too often. John Williams' score still works well to help generate some semblance of a sense of peril, but I'm afraid this isn't remotely scary and was quite a disappointing watch.
