Jurassic Park III
Movie Reviews | Jul 18th, 2001
Starring Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Téa Leoni, Alessandro Nivola, Michael Jeter, Laura Dern
Written By: Peter Buchman, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
Directed By: Joe Johnston
A couple of years later from The Lost World, Sam Neill’s character Dr. Alan Grant still searches for dinos, but only fossils. Mr. Kirby, played by William H. Macy walks into Dr. Grant’s tent and has an offer for him and his assistant Billy (Alessandro Nivola). Mr. Kirby and his wife (Téa Leoni) want to go on a big adventure, since they have been on many.
They want him to be a tour guide when they “fly over” Isla Sorna, site B in The Lost World. Dr. Grant eventually agrees and then the mayhem happens. Mr. Kirby hires 3 mercenaries to help them just in cast and to fly the plane around the island. You pretty much figure out what happens next.
This movie was very entertaining, but I’ve felt it might have been 10 minutes too short. I was definitely shaken in my seats trying to figure out what will happen next. You can kind of guess who’s going to get eaten in this film. This movie I thought was the funnier one out of the bunch. A lot of funny one liners and things that happen added humor to the film which I liked. Besides Sam Neill kicking ass in this film, I thought William H. Macy stole the show. His character was the one that added the humor many of the scenes. It was a treat to see Laura Dern in this one as well. I actually wished she went along on the trip but I’m sure there are sequels in the works.
Téa Leoni was kind of boring in this film, but I don’t think it was her, I think that this movie was focused on the dinosaurs more than the people. I thought there was a lot of cool scenes in this movie like the pterodactyls scene, the airplane scene, water scene, and raptors are always fun to watch. This movie definitely has it’s problems, since it was almost not made, and it barely had a script. Music sidenote, I think Don Davis did a great job filling in for John Williams and you hear a lot of the Jurassic Park theme throughout the film.
I thought the special effects were excellent once again. Maybe a couple of scenes that looked fake or cheesy. One was the opening scene with the para-sailing. It looked too fake and should have done better. The dinosaurs looked better when they were animatrics than CGI. It gave that realistic look and also Stan Winston is a legend in that field so anything he does, it will come out good. I thought Joe Johnston did a good job directing filling in for Spielberg. I’m sure if Spielberg was directing, the movie would have had that cuteness approach to it, as well as the movie being longer.
I think the movie got a little out there when the Raptors started to talk to each other. But you have to think that this is a fantasy film and is meant to be entertaining. Though now that I think of it, animals do talk to each other, we just can’t understand it. Anywho, this movie is definitely worth seeing this summer because there hasn’t been a decent summer blockbuster, popcorn flick since The Mummy Returns. I thought this movie was better than The Lost World, but not as good as the first one.
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 93 minutes
Overall Rating:
