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'Playing With Sharks': Robin's Movie Review

A movie poster for the film “Playing With Sharks.” Valerie Taylor is wearing a swimsuit and an oxygen tank on her back. She is looking toward the camera and smiling. There is an open body of water in the background with visible, inbound waves.
Disney+

For this week’s Movie Minutes, KUNR entertainment reviewer Robin Holabird looks at a summer film that tells us all it’s ok to go into the water.

Summer means heat, outdoor fun, a break from school, and for cinema fans, a new shark movie. This week’s entry comes in a tasteful form; not tasty as sharks might like, but with more class and style than most entries in the genre. Called Playing with Sharks, the documentary looks at diver Valerie Taylor, who with her husband Ron inadvertently contributed to the summer tradition of shark movies.

The two spearfishing champions from Australia led the way in underwater photography of sharks during the 1970s, leading to the documentary Blue Water, White Death. This, in turn, got them a job providing footage of real great white sharks that director Steven Spielberg inserted into his movie Jaws.

Nearly fifty years later, the impacts remain. In directing and compiling her own documentary Playing with Sharks, Sally Aitken benefits from access to the Taylors’ footage as well as Valerie herself. Now 85 years old, Taylor remains even more remarkable than in her early pioneering days as a gorgeous young woman fearlessly entering the water with sharks.

As Aitken’s new footage shows, Taylor needs help putting on her scuba set now, but she enthusiastically heads right into the waters off the coast of Fiji, doing just what the title says: playing with sharks. Specifically bull sharks, which many consider more dangerous than great whites. While a “don’t try this yourself” advisory seems warranted, Taylor’s goal involves helping others understand the wrongheadedness of wholesale shark slaughters — an activity the movie Jaws helped inspire. Offering plenty of visuals to make that point, Valerie Taylor and Playing with Sharks make ideal summer viewing.

The movie debuted on July 23 on Disney+.

Robin Holabird is KUNR's Entertainment Reviewer, author and former film commissioner for the Nevada Film Office. You can hear all of her reviews here.

Robin Holabird reviews movies for KUNR, and her reviews have aired for more than 30 years. During that time, she has had a high profile in the Nevada film community.
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