1978's Jaws 2 hits a qualitative ceiling, though, due to the joint absence of Steven Spielberg and Academy Award-winning editor Verna Fields; gone is the pair's sense of economy. Some visual unity is also lost with cinematographer Michael C. Butler (no relation, as far as I know, to Jaws d.p. Bill Butler), who oversaturates the coastal scenery and employs fashionable but needless zooms. (Have you noticed that Spielberg's films are rather timelessly photographed?) Although they both came from television and Rod Serling's "Night Gallery", director Jeannot Szwarc seems more firmly in the TV tradition than does Spielberg, with each camera set-up predictable and most of the performances lacking in subtext.

Scheider's is a glowing exception. From Chief Brody's entrance, set to a high-school band's instrumental rendition of "Downtown," there is a subtle anxiety conveyed by his movements, and as the character grows panicked and obsessive, Scheider begins to support the movie on his shoulders with illusory effortlessness. In Jaws 2, Brody must once again contend with disbelieving council members when he gets a hunch that a great white has infested local waters. After his sons become mixed up in the local sailing scene (which Gottlieb based on the cruising subculture of seventies teenagers), thus establishing themselves shark bait, Brody defaults to full reconnaissance mode.

Scheider's major co-star is the title creature, shown here with abandon (it's genre tradition to cloak your villain the first time out and be the opposite of bashful the second) and 'bloodthirstier' than his antecedent. Were there only meaty characters upon which he could feast; the kids, above all, would explain his appetite for destruction, as they're largely annoying 'Afterschool Special' archetypes. (Come to think of it, they're not so well defined as that, and the various subplots between them dissipate in a chorus of shrieking.)

Conviction compensates for an overall dearth of characterization and style in the ultimately agreeable Jaws 2. The sequel was very clearly not sloughed-off (it endured personnel changes and a protracted shoot), and there's an attempt made by Brody to contact his surviving shipmate from Jaws--the filmmakers also have to suffice without the talents of the original's Richard Dreyfuss (ichthyologist Hooper), but they want you to know that they're trying, and that they have no intention of downplaying your attachments to Jaws 2's über-successful predecessor. Szwarc is respectful and ambitious, even when he's not up to the task.

Fittingly, Universal's Jaws 2 disc is not on a par with their DVD release of Jaws, but it still satisfies more than it perhaps ought to. The film's 2.35:1 aspect ratio has been preserved and enhanced for 16x9 displays. While the print used for this transfer is dinged in spots, the image is significantly clean and artifact-free, with rich blacks and sharp shadows. The 2.0 mono audio is about as good as that gets; Williams' score often sounds deceptively stereophonic.

Laurent Bouzereau assembled the aforementioned "The Making of Jaws 2" (45 mins.), which reconfirms, through new interviews with such crew as Szwarc and Alves, the frustrations of setting pictures at sea in the pre-CGI world. Sadly, Scheider is AWOL from another Jaws doc, though Szwarc reveals that it took awhile for the star to recapture his inner Brody. Excerpted within this making-of and shown fully in a separate section are four deleted scenes (in non-anamorphic 2.35:1). Most, if not all, were removed for pacing considerations (poor Hamilton lost his lone sympathetic moment), but a particularly gruesome omitted fatality also pitted the producers against the ratings board.

A sweet, eight-minute or so reminiscence from actor-turned-auteur Keith Gordon (he portrayed the most memorable of the endangered teens), a featurette about "The French Joke" (don't ask), storyboards for three action sequences, "shark facts," a curiously unbroken block of trailers for Jaws 2 (plus previews for Jaws, The Mummy, and Tremors among the handful of "recommendations"), production notes and stills, cast and crew bios, and a link to Universal's DVD newsletter contribute additional bite to this package, whose main menu features a startling animation.-Bill Chambers