I suppose that after the success of The Lost World, we were going to get yet another Jurassic Park film. I thought The Lost World was terrible. I was, however, not prepared for how Jurassic Park III would be even worse. Dumb, unexciting and even insulting, Jurassic Park III is almost a desecration of the original film.
Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) makes it clear that he has absolutely no intention of talking about what happened to him on Isla Nublar or what happened in San Diego, which he helpfully reminds audiences that he was not part of. He also says that nothing will get him to Isla Sorna or Site B, which we learned about in the last film.
Famous last words, for Grant reluctantly agrees to merely fly over Isla Sorna in exchange for funding from wealthy couple Paul and Amanda Kirby (William H. Macy and Tea Leoni). Grant thinks that he is going to only point out the various creatures to the Kirbys. In reality, he is essentially kidnapped in order to help them find their son Eric (Trevor Morgan) and Amanda's boyfriend Ben (Mark Herelick), who disappeared while parasailing near the island.
Amanda's boyfriend? Yes, for Grant and his assistant Billy (Alessandro Nivola) find out that they are actually divorced. Worse, they are not wealthy patrons of the sciences but upper middle class, Paul owning Kirby Paint and Tile Plus hardware store. Now it is on to find and hopefully save Eric once Ben's rotted corpse is found. The pilot and mercenaries that the Kirbys brought face dangers all around. Even after Eric is found, they still find themselves pursued.
Billy has taken a pair of dinosaur eggs in a misguided effort to use them to gain more funding. Grant knows that the dinosaurs will keep after them to get the eggs back. From there, the survivors must find a way to reach shore. Will they be able to escape Site B? Will Grant's former love, Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) be able to help them despite being far away in her domestic bliss?
It is curious that Peter Buchman, Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne failed in their Jurassic Park III screenplay the same way that The Lost World failed in its screenplay. By now, we all should know that as soon as a character says that he/she will never go back to XYZ, they are definitely going back to XYZ. Even worse, director Joe Johnson and actor Sam Neill almost seem to openly mock this in how Johnson moved his camera closer to Neill when he overacted that bit of dialogue. It is as if they wanted to draw attention to how Grant was going back to where even Grant knew it beforehand.
As a side note, it is astonishing that Alexander Payne, who brought us the brilliant Election, Sideways, Nebraska and The Holdovers, had a hand in this debacle.
Jurassic Park III is one of the laziest films that I have seen. It is probably the laziest film in the entire unfortunate franchise. One particularly ghastly moment is when they are trapped in a flooding river with a heavy rainstorm making things worse. As they battle for their lives, they grab onto a found satellite phone. When Grant picks up, he hears a robocall for a time-share offer. I figure those behind the camera thought that this would be a good gag. It just was both idiotic and cut what little tension Jurassic Park III was attempting to build.
Far from being tense and exciting, Jurassic Park III was dumb and laughable. I think Tea Leoni has been singled out for her performance, but as one to ridicule. She did not help herself when she got tangled up in Ben's cord, screaming and going into hysterics that came across as more comic than horrified. I want to say that she did the best that she could with such a badly written character, one who continued to call out Eric's name over a bullhorn despite being told not to by Grant and even Paul. There was little for Leoni to work with, but it does not absolve her from her at times laughable performance.
It is not as if everyone else covered themselves in glory. Neill got a nice paycheck out of this, but he looked totally unenthusiastic about being here. Yes, one can say that it reflected the character. However, in his scenes with Dern or when off the island, he looked as if he figured that it was in his best interest to devour the screen to give him something to do. I think Macy, like Leoni, did the best that he could. He did have that average man quality to Paul, but the scenes of the Kirby domestic drama in the midst of the mayhem did not help.
To be fair, I did think well of Michael Jeter as Udesky, one of Kirby's mercenaries. It was a break from his usual roles of meek figures, and Jeter was effective as this more rugged figure facing off against these gruesome creatures.
I genuinely wondered why Nivola's Billy could not have been the new lead, with Grant merely serving as mentor. He was fine, but not great, and for long stretches I genuinely wondered who he was. Morgan was nothing special, neither as clever or amusing as Joseph Mazzello's Tim or as courageous as Ariana Richards' Lex from the first film. How exactly he survived eight whole weeks on the island Lord of the Flies style the film won't say.
Eight days I could believe. Two months managing to avoid getting eaten by the dinosaurs, scavenging food and water and with no one actually looking for him is a stretch.
As a side note, Jurassic Park III did a poor job of shoehorning Laura Dern.
These are some of the worse dinosaurs that I have seen. Grant at one point called the dinosaurs he encountered at Jurassic Park "genetically engineered theme park monsters", a strange turn from someone who initially had been impressed with the dinosaurs. Granted, he had a horrendous experience with them that might have soured his feelings. However, I found that the dinosaurs here looked like the auto-animatronic figures from a Disney ride. When we are supposed to see dinosaurs, I saw fake imagery.
Jurassic Park III did nothing with what had come before. It did not make the case for itself. I did not even get good dinosaurs or humans. The third time was most definitely not the charm.
JURASSIC PARK FILMS
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Jurassic World Rebirth
No comments:
Post a Comment
Views are always welcome, but I would ask that no vulgarity be used. Any posts that contain foul language or are bigoted in any way will not be posted.
Thank you.