Jurassic Park III Review
Leading up to the release of Jurassic World: Dominion I’m reviewing all of the previous movies in the Jurassic Park/World franchise. We are in week number 3 so we are talking about Jurassic Park III. Let’s get started!
The Good:
For me, I think this movie actually does have a pretty good set-up for a movie. You have a kid that went missing on an island, so a family has to go to the island to rescue the kid. And so of the sequels, I think this is the one that has the best set-up for it. It’s not building a second park or finding out there’s a second island filled with dinosaurs but this time without a park on it. So the movie does work on that level, the execution of it might not be the best. But the central idea of the movie, how our characters get to the island really does work for me.
From there, the cast for the movie is pretty good. You get the return of Sam Neill as Alan Grant, that’s just a great character and he’s played so well by Sam Neill. Grant is probably my favorite character in this entire franchise, where he is very cynical towards things but is still likable and somewhat charming. So him back in the lead is great to see. William H. Macy is a solid actor to throw into this movie as the dad, he does provide some solid moments here and there. I haven’t seen much of his other work, so I don’t know how this performance might compare to some of his other performances.
Also, since this is the shortest film in the franchise at 1 hour and 32 minutes it’s never boring. It moves quickly from plot point to plot point in a way where you can still follow everything that is going on. We establish the film’s plot and conflict in the opening scene, and we are off to the island within 15 minutes of the movie. That’s the thing with these sequels, they have issues they aren’t perfect but they are never boring to me.
Finally, the movie does deliver plenty of fun dinosaur action all through-out the movie. You get plenty of dinosaurs eating and killing people. All of it is exciting and fun to watch, it’s not as good as when Steven Spielberg directed it. But it is fun and they do different things with the dinosaurs. The big stand-out for me is when they are in the cage with the flying dinosaurs and trying to escape, I’ve always really dug that sequence.
The Bad:
And the big thing here is I think the absence of Steven Spielberg is present here. Spielberg’s direction was my biggest positive for both Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and they replaced him with Joe Johnston. Joe Johnston is a solid director that directed Captain America the First Avenger, Jumanji, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids so he can do big action adventure movies like this. But he’s not Spielberg, and it felt they tried too hard to capture that magic of what Spielberg can bring to the franchise. I think Spielberg’s absence here is really what holds the movie back, it doesn’t have that magic that Spielberg brings to the franchise. Even with that, none of the sequences have that sense of danger or urgency that they had in the first 2 movies. No sequences make you feel like you are on the edge of your seat, waiting for what is going to happen next. I don’t get the same experience, that same feeling watching this movie.
Another issue here is I don’t like the way this movie looks, I think this is the worst looking movie of the franchise. The whole movie is very dark, the island is very stormy and cloudy. So it doesn’t make for a particularly exciting place to be. And even though this movie came out 8 years after the original movie, and 4 years after the second movie the visuals here don’t look very good. And I’m not sure how much of that is the budget, short on time, or the fact that Spielberg wasn’t directing it. Easily, I think this is the worst looking movie of the franchise.
Also, there are some ideas in this movie that are very very weird and don’t work. And there are two big examples of this. First up, the scene where Alan Grant takes a nap, wakes up and where Billy was sitting he sees a velociraptor. When I was a kid, I didn’t think much of it, but watching it now it really doesn’t work at all for me. Second, one of the dinosaurs eats a human that has a satellite phone, and the phone is in the dinosaur. So whenever our characters know that the dinosaur is nearby, it’s because they can hear the phone going off inside of the dinosaur. Then at some point they have to dig through the dinosaur’s poop to find it. It’s a bit over the top for my taste, and doesn’t fit the rest of the franchise.
Finally, this movie has all of the pieces for a Jurassic Park movie but the end result just doesn’t come together. It has a good set-up for a Jurassic Park sequel, it has dinosaur action, and a fun cast. But for whatever reason the pieces just don’t come together in the end. And I heard somebody say that this movie has the reverse problem of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, where that movie has great moments but not a great set-up. This movie has a great set-up but not great moments.
Final Thoughts: Like most people, Jurassic Park III isn’t a very good movie and is my least favorite movie of the franchise. It has a great set-up for a sequel and a fun cast. But the movie just has never come together for me, it’s not as good as it should have been. So while there are some things to enjoy, the movie as a whole isn’t the best.
The Score: 7.7/10 (C)
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