I suppose it's weird to think of Jaws, a tremendous box-office smash from its inception, as an underrated movie, but that's exactly what it is. Jaws is like one of those pop songs you heard five-thousand times on the radio but never paid much attention to -- you know the tune and the chorus but none of the verses or what the hell the song is even about. But when for some reason you finally, accidentally, listen to it for real, you discover that the song is fantastic.

Likewise, sure, you saw Jaws way back in the day, and oh, you know all about it, don't you? Jaws. Yeah. Uh-huh. Sharks. "Dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun..." But seriously, when was the last time you thought about the movie? How old were you the last time you saw it? Or, since everyone knows the theme song and the basic idea and since the movie's been parodied in just about everything, are you certain that you've ever actually seen the movie at all?

Jaws is one of the most entertaining movies of all time.

The first time I saw Jaws, I was probably about 7 years old, which is a great age to see a movie about shark attacks. I remember that it was on cable, and that I asked if I could invite one of my friends from the neighborhood over to watch it. For two hours we sat there shrieking with glee, agog at all the violence and gore, but also I at least was enrapt with the characters, enough so that when I rewatched the movie just last night, I could actually predict some of the lines of dialog.

It definitely made an impression on me the first time, and almost 30 years later, it conjured up all of the same emotions. And even as I shrieked with glee again at the severed limbs and the terror and the suspense, the thing I liked most about rewatching the movie was Brody, Hooper and Quint, the three men who set out to kill the shark.

Brody is a NYC cop with a fear of water who's moved to the small island town of Amity to become its chief of police and raise his family in comfort. Hooper is an smart-assed Ivy League rich boy who funds his own shark research. Quint is a "sharker," a tough blue-collar fisherman who speaks with a New England accent and thinks everyone else is a joke. Seeing the three of them play off each other is part of what makes the movie so fun to watch.

The key scene, to me, takes place at night on Quint's fishing boat, the Orca. They've just spent the day hunting down the killer shark, catching him with a fishing rod, and attaching barrels to him with harpoons. None of this has phased the shark, but the men are exhausted. So they sit below deck insulting each other at first, before they start drinking and comparing scars. Before long, these three guys -- who all kind of hate each other -- are singing and joking around. Then Quint tells a story that puts a damper on their party. It's then that the men are all connected, for maybe a few superficial reasons as well as one fundamental one: none of them are sharks.

But the thing that really strikes me about Jaws is that when I really think about it, I doubt it's a movie that would be made today, mainly because there is no love interest. None. Sure, Brody has a wife, and she has some important lines. But American movies now (especially summer blockbusters) all require someone to fall in love. No one falls in love in Jaws. They just fall into the shark's mouth.

Another reason is that it's hard for us to take monster movies seriously. I mean, let's face it. Snakes on a Plane? Just because monster movies were cheesy back in the 50s doesn't mean they always have to be cheesy. And while the shark in Jaws doesn't look all that real (ok, it's pretty fakey) you hardly ever see the shark. It isn't how the shark looks that makes it terrifying. What's terrifying is that it's a shark. It eats people. You don't have to see it to know why the people in the movie are swimming for their lives.

If you think all monster movies are cheesy, you obviously haven't seen Alien.

Which brings me to the most important reason why Jaws would never be made today: CGI. It seems that whenever filmmakers can do something, they feel that the must do it. In a film made today, the shark would be the star of the movie. And the movie would bomb because of it. Originally, the plan while filming Jaws was to feature the mechanical shark heavily, but they couldn't do it because the shark was a piece of junk ("the great white turd" Spielberg called it). And so, they had to make the movie the old-fashioned way.

They had to tell a story. About people.