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Dan Owen reviews
- Cert:
- Running time: 123 minutes
- Year: 2001
- Released: 20th July 2001
- Widescreen Ratio : 1.85:1
- Rating: 6/10
Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Sam Neill, William H Macy, Tea Leoni, Alessandro Nivollo
One of the most successful movies of all time,Jurassic Park,gives birth to its second sequel – the unimaginatively titledJurassic Park III.
As we know, The Lost World: Jurassic Parkmet with criticism amongst people when it was released back in 1997 – but thatdidn’t stop it making a small fortune for Mr Spielberg – yet again! So how hasthe inevitable Part III faired?
The basic plot of JP3 is that rich businessman Paul Kirby enlists the help ofDr Grant (Sam Neill from the original film) to help himtrack down his missing son – who has been marooned on the dino-infestedisland after a paragliding “accident”. Needless to say, their rescue plangoes slightly awry and Dr Grant and his gang of walking dino-bait findthemselves in a similar predicament…
Classic B-movie plot, eh? What separates JP3 from itspredecessors is the wanton disregard for pretension and plot. JurassicPark had a pulpy and scientifically intriguing concept and a story based ona bestselling book to wrap its jaw-dropping special-effects around… TheLost World at least had apprehensions of a plot due to its book origins,although they soon gave way to MORE of those jaw-dropping special-effects…but JP3 has no such crutches.
JP3 does have an enjoyable raison d’etre to get the “meat” onto theisland… but the film sustains its meagre running time with the followingplot-steps: dino attack, escape, dino attack, escape, dino attack, escape,dino attack, escape, roll credits, the end.
But, hey, nobody’s watching this movie for the story! So long as thecharacters aren’t too paper-thin and unlikeable and therefore worth “rootingfor” during the various prehistoric pitfalls, right?
Well, thankfully, the eclectic cast is very watchable – Sam Neill iswonderful as Dr Grant, effortlessly giving the movie a gravitas that wasmissing from The Lost World. In that movie, Jeff Goldblum‘s characterwasn’t a dinosaur expert, simply a frightened father/boyfriend who hadexperienced the hazards dinosaurs can bring. It’s far more affecting when anexpert is there to genuinely LEAD the characters through the dilemmas, ashappens in JP3.
Neill is also supported in this mentor-like role by Allesandra Nivollo’scharacter, who plays a young protoge of Dr Grant’s. The “kid” character sopoorly represented in The Lost World returns here, but this time the childis actually a lot smarter than the adults and as such never drags the moviedown with sentimentality and whiney dialogue to “mom n’ dad”.
William H Macy is good, although his character’s sole purpose is to act likea wimp and his development is sloppily handled. Tea Leoni, Miss DavidDuchovny herself, is perhaps the worst actor in the movie – replete withher ear-achingly awful accent. She even seems to have been given the fullamount of forehead-slapping moments usually reserved for the childcharacters. Very poor.
Okay, okay, the DINOSAURS? That’s what you’re interested in? Well, I’m goingto stick my neck out here and say… I preferred the work done in The LostWorld. The effects work here looked slightly rushed, occassionally evenout-of-focus, proportionally wrong at times, there were also minimal amountsof environmental interaction (mud, puddles, etc), and worst of all… it wasquite “cartoonish” in places. In particular, the brachiosaurus’ resemblethose from Disney’s Dinosaur last year and the pteradons looked like giantpellicans fromJumanji!
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) even chose to make the dinosaurs morecolourful than ever before! There are tiger-striped brachiosaurus’s,red-headed raptors, and even a slightly pink spinosaurus!
But in terms of animation – you can’t fault ILM, and the animatronic work byStan Winston is better than ever before. In fact, the spinosaurus and raptor”models” look much better than the CGI work in some scenes! Impressive. But,yes, when it comes to full-body movement, CGI is still King and JP3is certainly not UN-impressive in terms of effects. Just… not asfulfilling as Lost World. Maybe the novelty’s just worn off…
Joe Johnston, taking over in the director’s chair from Steven Spielberg,acquits himself fairly well, although he only really gets to shine in twosequences: the island plane crash and the spinosaurus boat attack. And bothare moments Spielberg would have choreographed much better. Sadly,Johnston’s talents never reach an apex that Spielberg achieved with hisT-Rex attack in JP or the mobile home cliffhanger of Lost World.Johnston just proves himself to be a very capable director, who got the jobdone.
Some other random obervations: the cinematography of JP3 is great – thelush jungle setting is impressive and believable, especially during thepteradon attack with the foggy bridge. However, despite some people hatingthe constant rain of Lost World, it’s strange that the one TRULY tensemoment of the film just happened to be when it’s raining… maybe Spielbergrealized this on Lost World after the rain-drenched T-Rex scenes of theoriginal…?
I also disliked the lapses of consistency in the film. In one scene, aspinosaurs proves it can easily smash its way through a collosal fence, butin the next scene it gives up when faced with a wooden door!
Also, JP3 made me pine for the more realistic approach of the originalfilm. In the original, just the THOUGHT that the velociraptors had escapedmade you want to committ suicide and save yourself an “inevitably” painfuldeath, but in JP3 you can apparently run rings around the pesky raptorsby hiding up trees and “communicating” with them! Hmmm. Similarly, humanscan apparently outrun a dinosaur that can surely reach 30 mph withoutbreaking sweat!
For me, these “minor” complaints weren’t enough to make me hate the film…it’s just that there were just so many “minor” problems and mistakes, it didbegin to detract from the film and make you realize how superior aspects ofthe past movies were.
So, overall, do I recommend JP3? Well.. yes. It does deliverwhat it promises – lots of dinosaurs, more CGI onscreen than ever before,less plot but more action, a better cast than Lost World, and a nice”popcorn” spirit to it that Summer 2001 has been lacking.
But – DO leave your brain at the door.
Review copyright © Dan Owen, 2001.E-mail Dan Owen
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.