Jurassic
Park III
(2001)
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 1 Hour and 33 Minutes
Reviewer: Dale
Grade: BOkay, new "Jurassic Park" movie. Let's rock and roll.
Pros?
The dinosaurs look way better this time, which is inevitable, really. Technology advances at such a radical rate that the dinosaurs can't help but look better. They move more nimbly, they eat more ferociously, they roar louder, and they look sleeker and more real. It's pretty damn impressive.
The actors all did a good job with what they had. I mean, let's face it, they aren't working with a Tarantino script here. That said, there are some witty lines. I attribute that to the fact that Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor had a hand in it. They did write "Election", after all, a movie that was a delicately-crafted sharp satire. Sam Neill shows us why we missed him in "The Lost World" with his spry turn here. Macy and Tea Leoni are both very good also, as is Alessandro Nivola: an actor I have enjoyed ever since seeing him as Nicolas Cage's slimy little brother in "Face/Off".
There were a lot of moments that I really enjoyed, actually. I liked the device of the dinosaur that ate the guy with the satellite phone, so you know he's coming when you hear a phone ring from inside his stomach. I found that a very nice touch. Ditto to the character of William H. Macy, who lures Sam Neill to the island with the promise of a large payday, only to confess that he only owns a tub and tile shop in Oklahoma. "But if any of you guys ever need some work done on your bathrooms.." Hell, made me laugh.
I loved the kid. For once, the kid in one of these damn Jurassic Park movies is a likable and refreshing character. He's only 13, so he acts like an adult and actually manages to hold his own on the island for eight weeks. There are some nice jokes about that as well.
The dinosaurs are cool. This time, instead of showing us the T-Rex yet again, we get a new batch of dinos. The first dino scene lets you know how everything has been raised a notch.
The T-Rex shows up and roars, then the Spinosaurus comes stomping in, rumbles with it, and eats its ass. There are cameos by all our old dino friends (Triceratops, Brachiosaur, Compy and some weirdo dinosaur that apparently eats the other dinosaurs' shit...don't ask) but, for the most part, its a bunch of new critters. We get some awesome attacks by the pterodactyls (they're the best thing in the movie, actually, and the scene where someone is rescued from them is about as good as a movie like this can get) and a lot of Spinosaur action. Plus, the raptors are smarter this time. Well, they have had a few years to learn some new tricks.
Cons?
The beginning ten or fifteen minutes are very lame for the most part. A DREAM sequence with a talking velociraptor? Was that really necessary? I think not. And they have to go to the island to rescue a kid who accidentally wound up there after a parasailing incident? Pretty thin, guys. The plot is pretty much nonexistent. Kid winds up on island, parents go looking for him. That's it. Hope they didn't pay the writers a lot for that one. If they did, they got robbed.
Also, I must again lament the fact that no dinosaurs are killed with big guns in this movie. At the beginning of the movie, the guys are testing out these huge guns and I'm thinking: "Sweet!
I can't wait to see some dinosaurs get blown apart by those puppies!" But when they crash on the island, what's the first thing they leave behind? The damn guns, of course. Sigh. Pretty damn disappointing.
Oh, and the movie ends far too quickly. Snap, it's over. Just like that. Huh? And one character who looks dead turns up again at the end on a stretcher, something that never makes me overly happy.
But I'm still recommending it. It was fun, and it's far less convoluted than "The Mummy Returns". I may even go again. Who knows? The theater IS air conditioned.