140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW
1st in the series not based on a novel (2nd if you count The Lost World) is slight but somehow more enjoyable for it. Punches its weight…
Spoiler-free Movie Review of Jurassic Park III:
It would be silly to suggest that a $93 million dollar dinosaur movie that is part of one of the highest-grossing franchises of all time could somehow be stealthy, but I really knew nothing of this film until it was in theaters.
You have to remember that in the years between the release of The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Jurassic Park III (2001), the internet was a very different place. Sure, there was a ton of information out there, but you didn’t trip over it like you do today – you needed to know what you were looking for and actively seek it out.
More importantly, though, the landscape of summer movies had changed since the last film. We had a new Star Wars trilogy, the surprise of The Matrix, the first good comic book movie in years (X-Men) and the promise of another (Spider-Man). Within the year, the first installments of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter were finally coming to theaters. Who needed dinosaurs?
It’s a Hollywood adage (attributed to Ben Burtt unless someone can come up with another source) that movies aren’t released, they escape. It certainly feels true in the case of Jurassic Park III, and not solely because of the under the radar nature in which it hit theaters in 2001. More than anything, it feels like a movie they made because everyone in Hollywood sees things in trilogies and so they finished this one because they had come this far and it seemed silly to stop now.
Jurassic Park III starts from a position of weakness, possessing an also-ran feel that’s hard to shake off. First picture not based on a novel, first picture not directed by Spielberg, first picture not scored by John Williams, first picture without Richard Attenborough or Jeff Goldblum. The impression that the film was an afterthought is completely untrue; the budget was larger than the previous films, director Joe Johnston had been interested in the picture all along, and the film made over $350 million worldwide – impressive compared to anything but the first two installments. But it feels true…
But why? I don’t think there’s any one thing to point to as a problem with Jurassic Park III – except possibly for that III – it just feels very much like the sequel that it is. The story is not bad, particularly, just not massively compelling.
The initial idea for The Lost World was a rescue mission, which was the only plausible reason for Ian Malcolm to willingly go to a dino-infested island. The rescue didn’t come across as clearly as a major plot point in the film as in the novel, so I guess they decided to tap into it for the plot of this picture. That’s a recurring theme, by the way – going back to the novels and using anything they didn’t get around to before.
In this case, the rescue involves the son of a presumably wealthy couple, the Kirbys, who shanghai Dr. Alan Grant and his assistant into the rescue mission on Isla Sorna (Site B and the location of most of The Lost World). Bringing Grant along as an unwilling conscript is a good concept, as the makeup of the character can remain consistent.
The Kirbys are in fact divorced and more importantly not good for the large sums they have promised their mercenaries and consultants. I don’t know which should have been the tip-off, that Tea Leoni would be married to a schlub like William H. Macy’s character, or that Macy would be paired with a TV actress. Either way, it’s news to Grant (Sam Neill) and Billy Brennan (Allesandro Nivola), who have been promised too much money to refuse in exchange for their services as guides for an aerial tour of the island. In fact, they are horrified to learn that the Kirbys intend to land on the island to search for their son Eric (Trevor Morgan), missing since a a parasailing excursion ventured too far to Isla Sorna, now a biological preserve if you remember from the end of the last film (if you were still awake and watching).
With the reluctant dinosaur experts in tow, the party does everything wrong and the mission goes south almost upon landing on the island. So inept is this plan that they didn’t even realize their dinosaur expert has never been on the island they are searching. The mercenaries are really more like hobbyists, led by the always entertaining Michael Jeter. Depending on your viewing habits, you may know him more from serious works like The Green Mile or The Fisher King or silly turns in Air Bud, Mouse Hunt and famously Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street, but in either case you’d never accept him as a hard-ass soldier of fortune.
It’s so great to have Sam Neill back as Alan Grant. Such a fine actor and it’s a really great part. I quite enjoyed Goldblum leading The Lost World: Jurassic Park as Ian Malcolm – he was excellent – but Alan Grant was sorely missed. Neill portrays the paleontologist with a mix of scholarly intellect, scientific determination, rugged bravery and boyish enthusiasm. Some of the best parts of the Jurassic series depict the curiosity and sense of wonder about these animals, often embodied as much by Grant as by younger characters. It’s something that Spielberg and Johnston both do extremely well, and it’s not to be overlooked. The pictures could very quickly be silly, overwhelmed by forehead-slapping “how could you be so stupid” moments to the point where the motivation behind continuing to make the films could come into question. But the filmmakers succeed in reminding the audience why this is all worth the ride, tapping into the human fascination with dinosaurs and love of a great adventure.
Of course the real stars of the picture are the dinosaurs, as it should be, and they’ve introduced a new big bad for this third time out, Spinosaurus. More than possibly any of the dinosaurs that have appeared in the series previously, Spinosaurus really looks nothing like my childhood study of dinos. Sure, a lot of the animals in these films move and act very different to our old perceptions of them, which is completely appropriate, as we’ve learned so much. (At least what we think we know has changed a lot, which some people think is the same thing.) Spino is very cool, but a bit lacking the brand recognition of T-Rex. The whole “Rex is the top of the food chain thing” was getting a bit long in the tooth (pun intended) and a new big bad seems to be a good solution, but since there’s no academic setup or exposition, it just seems to be sort of an arbitrary addition – the equivalent of “faster, more intense” direction. It just kind of appears to up the stakes and thusly feels like pandering. Besides, where the hell was this thing hiding on the island for the entirety of the last movie?
Sadly, while they shook up the Rex dynamic, the filmmakers continued their obsession with Velociraptors, the Wolverine of this franchise. Going by the Jurassic Park films, you are led to believe that Velociraptors were the most important and perfect animals on Earth and only their extinction kept them from becoming our rulers.
Easily the best stuff in Jurassic Park III was cribbed from the first novel; the twin set-pieces of the river raft sequence and the aviary. If you read the book, nothing was as sorely missed from the film Jurassic Park so much as the sequence in the aviary. Even a quick glimpse of Pteranodon as the final shot of The Lost World couldn’t sate my appetite for these animals. The entire film is worth it just to see this sequence.
And it’s not like a lot of your time is eaten up by this film, anyway. The filmmakers clearly heard the complaint about the overlong Lost World and took it seriously. While the picture repeats some of the pacing missteps of the last film, Jurassic Park III at least wasn’t leaving itself open for criticism about being too long, clocking in at 93 minutes. Over a half an hour shorter than Lost World – that’s like a 30% haircut. Which is appropriate, because the issue with Lost World wasn’t that it was too long in of itself, it’s that it was too long for a picture that spent four seconds on setup and dropped you on the island in the first 15 minutes; it was inconsistent and made the thing seem longer than it was.
I like Jurassic Park III; anyone who doesn’t like it, finding it needless and derivative is not off-base; there are legitimate issues with the film. It hews closely to the Matrix/Pirates of the Caribbean/Back to the Future template for unplanned trilogies (I think I’ll call the phenomenon the Rule of Unexpected Triplets: the second installment in an unplanned trilogy will be so long, over-busy & clunky that the third film will seem OK by comparison). I maintain that it pulls its weight, though, and at least it can’t rightly be blamed for the franchise’s long hiatus. If you want to learn more about that, a cursory search on the web will turn up more than you want to know about dino/human hybrids. ::shudder::
Incidentally, my favorite acting performance in this film? Bernie Zilinskas (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1012545/), a school friend of mine from way back whom I had completely forgot had gone to Hollywood until he unexpectedly popped up in a brief speaking role in this picture. I nearly fell out of my seat at the AMC Braintree theater when a familiar looking guy stands up at Dr. Grant’s lecture to ask a question near the beginning of the film.
Oh yes, I did see Jurassic Park III in the theater, despite my earlier stated ignorance of the project. As I alluded to in my review of the original Jurassic Park novel, this topic and these films are something of a family affair. We all love them and share an enthusiasm that is unmitigated by the quality level of the production. Which came in handy with the subject of my next review, Jurassic World…
Poster:
Trailer:
Bechdel Test:
Fail
The Representation Test Score: C (4 pts)
(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)
| Main Cast | Sam Neill Dr. Alan Grant William H. Macy Paul Kirby Téa Leoni Amanda Kirby Alessandro Nivola Billy Brennan |
| Rating | PG-13 |
| Release Date | Wed 18 Jul 2001 UTC |
| Director | Joe Johnston |
| Genres | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller |
| Plot | A decidedly odd couple with ulterior motives convince Dr. Alan Grant to go to Isla Sorna (the second InGen dinosaur lab.), resulting in an unexpected landing…and unexpected new inhabitants on the island. |
| Poster |  |
| Runtime | 92 |
| Tagline | This Time It’s Not Just A Walk In The Park! |
| Writers | Michael Crichton (characters), Peter Buchman (written by) … |
| Year | 2001 |
