Nuh - nuh. Nuh - nuh - nuh.

Last week Carol and I watched the classic movie, Jaws, with Ben. I was surprised some months ago when Ben said he wanted to see Jaws as it features neither Will Farrell nor Jack Black. I think it was because he had read a bio of Steven Spielberg and because he’s shown a growing interest in horror movies. In any event, I was happy to find the HD version on DirecTV Download recently and recorded it for us to watch.

I saw Jaws, the first summer blockbuster, during its initial theatrical run when I was 10 years old. It was the first grown-up movie I ever saw in the theater and it made quite an impression on me. In the weeks after, I spent several nights sleeping on the floor in my parents’ room. They still like to say I was scared, but it wasn’t really fear I was feeling. I think it’s more accurate to say I found the movie unsettling. It was also one of the first movies I taped on our VCR and I watched it a LOT during the late 70s and early 80s. Jaws was the first movie where I noticed the soundtrack (in a good way). John Williams score is phenomenal and adds hugely to the tension, the terror and the lighter moments of the movie.

Seeing it again after so many years, and so many other Spielberg movies, was terrific and I appreciated it on a new level. Ben doesn’t have the greatest attention span during dialogue scenes but the first half of the movie was better paced than I remembered and Ben stayed with it. (This from a kid I had to literally order to keep watching Aliens a couple of months ago.) He laughed at the funny stuff and found the scary stuff compelling. Afterwards he posted on Facebook that he thought Jaws was great. Success!

Fortunately, since he’s 14, he hasn’t had to sleep on our bedroom floor. He has said that he never wants to go in the ocean again.