Jaws or Close Encounters!

Shouldn't there be some of your signature five or six dot "ellipses" in this reply?

I agree. Plus he left his wife and kids to fly in a UFO at the end.

Who's to say they won't actually murder him there?

This actually a good choice.

The reflective high school hall scene was terrific.

Not many kids would have that insight at the age.

Definitely a forward thinking character.

If the choice is ONLY Jaws versus Close Encounters...Jaws.

An odd reason to start: he LOOKED better in Jaws with that beard. Clean shaven in Close Encounters, his face wasn't terribly "movie star compelling" but the beard in Jaws gave him a sort of "intellectual macho" aura that served the movie well.

Keep in mind, Hooper in the book is more of a traditional tall, tan, muscular young guy(who has an affair with Chief Brody's wife!)

Spielberg and his writers dropped the affair(smart) and converted Hooper into someone the more nerdly young men in the audience could identify with -- kind of a stand-in for Spielberg himself, kind of "Woody Allen on the high seas." Though evidently, a lot of young women liked Dreyfuss' look in the film, too. And Hooper was smart. And Hooper was RICH. A dream man.

Dreyfuss as Hooper serves as one angle of the movie's great "male triangle of leads" -- straight man Roy Scheider, scene-stealing Old Salt Robert Shaw -- and brainy Dreyfuss in between. Dreyfuss isn't the full lead of Jaws as he will be in The Goodbye Girl and Mr. Holland's Opus -- but he stood out in a group.