Review of Jurassic Park III (2001) by Rob S — 25 Jul 2015

The aspect of Jurassic Park III that I liked is the fact that Dr. Alan Grant is restored as the protagonist in this installment, making for a more intriguing focus than when Goldblum was the protagonist of The Lost World. While there are a good amount of elements I disliked in this film, I thought I was going to enjoy it even less than I did. I set my expectations super low for a film I vaguely remember seeing around the time it was released, which means I haven't seen the film in roughly 14 years.

Just like in The Lost World, I can't believe how idiotic some of the characters were in this film. In The Lost World it was the old man who was extremely dumb sending people into danger again after being responsible for the tragedy at Jurassic Park, and now Kirby is the idiot for tricking Dr. Grant and his sidekick Billy into helping him rescue his son on the second island on which InGen was creating dinosaurs. It is brave of him as a father, but all the arrangements he made were stupid - Dr. Grant is a dinosaur expert, not the head of a rescue squad, the "mercenaries" Kirby hired weren't really mercenaries, and of course everybody except Grant, Kirby and his family, and Billy, are killed.

What doesn't make too much sense is that Kirby couldn't convince the U.S. embassy to help rescue his son, yet Ellie (Laura Dern) is able to convince the navy and marines to rescue Grant and everyone still alive on the island after one phone call from Grant.

This movie reminds me of a shorter version of Saving Private Ryan in a way, but these people are risking their lives for one boy, not one soldier, which creates a different emotional connection than Saving Private Ryan.

The quality of the film just doesn't seem to match up to the original 2 - the CGI is overused in this one and looks worse than the CGI of the first 2, and the robotic dinosaurs are utilized less, which kind of breaks the illusion of the movie. The writing is bad (by the way, what was Alexander Payne doing co-writing this movie? that was a strange credit to see) with dialogue about "driving 5 miles under the speed limit" intending to be meaningful (I'm not joking, it's that bad) and we lack dialogue as well as the theme of the ethics of recreating dinosaurs overall except for one instance when Grant says "this is playing God," referring to what InGen was doing.

The movie held my interest at times, but it was a fairly bad 3rd installment for this movie franchise. Let's see if Jurassic World starring Chris Pratt will surprise me.