Review of Jurassic Park III (2001) by Steven M — 18 Jan 2013

While I can't say that this film holds a candle to the first film on a storytelling level, it's at least here to do what it's supposed to do: be a fun film. And it gets to the point pretty fast and does so in a far more effective way than The Lost World: Jurassic Park. While that film was over two hours of whining environmentalists given far too much time to shoot their mouths off, this film at least understands that it's characters are not its strong point. And therefore, it doesn't waste too much time on them.

But with that... yeah... the characters are pretty lame. There's Tea Leoni and her scream that gets pretty old pretty fast. There's Sam Neil reprising his role as the reluctant Alan Grant, who seems far too easily swayed to return to the island for cash after his spiteful statements against it in the beginning. And there's Billy, played by Alessandro Nivola. And his character seems really bland and underdeveloped.

The story has a million holes in it, too. For example: why would any parents let their twelve year old child go on a trip anywhere near an island filled with dangerous dinosaurs? Why would there still be any need for paleontological digs if we could just create dinosaurs anytime? Doesn't that seem like wasted funding? Why can the biggest baddest predator of all time (Spinosaurus) kill a t-rex in seconds, yet not be able to catch five slow moving people? It's a jarringly porous script.

Still, if you can get past these things that weigh the screenplay down, there are some terrifically exciting scenes involving some seriously amped up dinosaurs. This is especially apparent in the river scene towards the end of the film. I'll be perfectly honest: it's one of the most convincing monster attacks I've ever seen in a film. And most of it is animatronics, done by the sorely missed Stan Winston. To be fair, when you only have a cast of five people for most of your movie, you can see why they'd be quick to draw out these chase scenes. Otherwise, Spiney would've been allowed to live up to a much fuller potential. And he is quite the ferocious antagonist when allowed to be.

I guess what it all comes down to is that the film simply had too much promise with what it was given to work with: small cast, the loss of the original writer (Micheal Crichton) and just how much it had to live up to. But take it for what it's worth. It's short, sweet and to the point. And it at the very least can passively entertain without overstaying it's welcome. It has that over the second film, which takes too much time on very blandly written characters. The film knows it's strong points and devotes far more time to them.