-Story-
This, the third installment of the Jurassic Park series see the introduction of some grizzly new dinosaurs as once again Sam Neill steps into the series as intrepid archeologist Dr. Alan Grant. There’s not really too much to this story. It’s very simple, a young boy lost on the island of In-Gen’s infamous ‘Site B’, has provoked his quirky separated parents to employ Dr. Grant on a mission to rescue their missing child thereby reuniting the family unit and restoring order to the universe. That’s it. It pretty typical movie pap. That’s not to say it’s really all that bad though; just unoriginal. The explorers obviously encounter some terrible dinosaurs that are all just waiting for some tasty human to chomp on. We also get the by now clichéd grand sweeping shots of the dinosaurs at play. Very nice to look at, but haven’t we seen all this somewhere before; oh yeah, it was the exact same thing that they did in JP1 and 2… Well, you can’t have everything, eh? This is still a pretty fun film, I liked how obvious it was about things. And I do think there’s still life in this series. It’s not like anyone ever expected a dinosaur film to really be a high quality movie. And that’s just what JP3 provides, a fun night’s entertainment, without making you think too hard.
3.5/5Well, Jurassic Park 3 actually does look pretty darn good. That’s one of the nice thing about a series like this. They’ve already got all these fantastic 3-D rendered dinosaurs from the first two films completed. They don’t need to worry about them, and they can work on putting more dinos in than ever before. Of course it doesn’t necessarily make all that much sense that we’d never have seen these new animals, but really, it is a sci fi, fantasy film about cloned dinosaurs! You really can’t ask too much of it.
This film sees the introduction of pterodactyls, and didactyls (I think that’s what they were). Anyhow, they were flying dinos and they we’re I have to admit very cool. There is an awesome scene where the kid gets carried off by one of them and the young, roguish understudy of Dr. Grant base-jumps off this crazy high cliffside to save him. Very cool. I think the CG is really getting better too. There was an excellent minute or two minute long fight scene between two large T-rex style dinos that was cool. The only bad part to the creatures I could see, was some of the raptor close ups were done with puppets. They probably should’ve just stuck with CG for these. The puppets were very different looking than the CG, and a little distracting. Otherwise though great work on the creatures, which let’s face it, is the real reason for seeing this film.
There was also included of course some really excellent music. John Williams wrote and conducted the theme for the original Speilberg helmed JP1; but thank god for franchising. The music is pretty much the exact same as used in JP1 and 2. Which is to say, excellent.
4/5The acting in these kind of films is really pretty fun. The characters are quirky and funny. Sam Neill returns as Dr Alan Grant and provides for the most part the foil to the wacky lost parents, played excellently by William H Macy, and Téa Leoni. Together they are wonderful, playing off each other’s emotions. Macy especially is very nice as the mild mannered bathroom and kitchen fixture salesman (a job near perfect for him). I was also happy that Neill returned to the franchise, he was always much more enjoyable to watch than Jeff Goldbloom.
The film was directed by Joe Johnston. His career has been filled with these quirky funny little films, starting with Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and The Rocketeer, and continuing with Jumanji and a few other oddballs. He is, I suppose adequate here. I'd guess that he is a director comfortable with CG, and that probably helped him land this job. And the film works. It’s not great by any means; but really, did you expect it to be. It’s fun, let's leave it at that.
3/5This is a fun film. It's got some pretty cool dinosaurs in it too. Is it as good as the first one? Not even close. Is it a good fun, not thinking kind of film? Yes; and we can't really ask for much more.
