Used to love this film overall

"I fondly remember it from the 70's as a kid..."
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That's exactly why it's still so fantastic NOW. And the other reason....is because it absolutely IS "dated", in the bext possible way. For starters, the whole magic and mystique of Jaws could never happen today. Jaws was the first summer blockbuster--there had never been anything like it before. If you're right around my age, you vaguely remember (as a little kid in the 70's)....the excitement and pop culture craze that Jaws generated. The t-shirts....the pinball game...the trading cards....that iconic score ("Donnn-da.....donnnda don-da don-da donda.....). My first taste of Jaws was getting to "stay up late" and watch it on the ABC Friday Night Movie (remember those?). I was at an age where it captivated me in every way. The music....the scariness....Quint was larger than life....Brody was cool and Hooper was their best hope. And the shark, in all its imperfections (by today's standards)....was PERFECT. Watching it was, for me, pure movie magic. Only a few movies in your lifetime will have that kind of impact. And today, it RARELY happens (but that's a different topic I could spend an hour on).

And Jaws was definitely a movie of its time. It was a perfect storm of time, era, place, tone, story, sound, look & feel, etc. And it captured the 70's, in the New England area, so perfectly. Back when everything was still so simple. You couldn't recapture that tone, mood and setting today, with everyone so connected with cell phones and the Internet. A "shark problem" wouldn't be as big of a deal...and by the second attack, everyone from Lester Holt to TMZ would be all over it.

Ahhh, the 70's. Just the perfect setting. One of my favorite scenes that really captures it is...the beginning of the scene where all the local fishermen set out to catch the shark. You see an old fisherman coming out of a bait shop with a sailor cap on, smoking a pipe. Pure 70's! Even Mayor Vaugn's leisure jacket with the anchors on it: perfect. The scene on the beach right before Alex Kintner gets attacked...with the baseball game on in the background on a transistor radio, and the faint sound of Olivia Newton John on someone's nearby radio....pure 70's.

Nowadays....movies are too polished, CGI'd and hip to have any character or soul. Much of what makes Jaws so perfect was....its imperfections. And the rest of what makes it so perfect is...it was set in the perfect place, and at the perfect time. You can't reproduce that magic. BUT....you CAN recapture it, every time it comes on. It's always a treat for me to catch it on a random cable station at 11:30 at night....because it takes me back to being that 8 year old kid, "staying up late" on a Friday night, sitting in my bean-bag chair, with a huge batch of popcorn and some Faygo......watching tensely as those first few tugs click away at Quint's fishing line, and he slowly straps-in. When you can watch a movie and have it take you back in time to the captivated 8 year old that still lives inside you, that's movie magic.