Movie Review: "Jurassic Park III" (2001)

DISCLAIMER: This review may contain spoilers.

Following the release of "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" in 1997, the plot of the third 'Jurassic Park' movie was highly speculative. One has to wonder whether the various ideas they had gone through would have worked out better than the final product. One thing is for sure, "Jurassic Park III" makes "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" look like "Citizen Kane".

I don't care how many people complain about the San Diego showdown with T-Rex, nothing in "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" amounts to the crap we have to sit through in "Jurassic Park III". The plot sees the return of Dr. Alan Grant this time around. He's moved on pretty well since the events of the first film, his biggest project seems to be the intelligent evolution of velicoraptors given that the dinosaurs weren't subjected to extinction.

He's also sworn to never set foot in Jurassic Park or any of its surrounding islands ever again. That is until a married couple (Paul and Amanda Kirby) scam him into giving them a flyby tour of Isla Sorna via private plane for a hefty amount of money. But come to find out, they're actually trying to recruit him to help them find their son who missing on a para-sailing trip on the island.

The adventurous feel of the first film is absent here more than ever, all that's left here is cheap comedy. Aside from its half-baked story, considering its running time and the overall pace of the film, there's many hints that this sequel was obviously rushed through production. It's so sad that they had four years to work with and this is the best that they could come up with for a 'Jurassic Park' sequel?

It was one thing to have "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" both take place on an island setting, but now "Jurassic Park III"? Seriously, how long can you keep a setting interesting before it becomes boring to look at? This is the third time and we're still looking at a maze of trees.

I'll give it some credit though, it does add a couple of new environments to spice things up such as the boat sequence with the Spinosaurus and the huge cage with the pterodactyls in it.

So the big thing this time around in "Jurassic Park III" is that the dinosaurs, or rather the velicoraptors, are becoming more intelligent. So much that they have developed their own way of communicating to each other. Funny, I could have sworn they were already doing that for the past two films? I mean they were already working together and hunting in packs, etc.

So how do these raptors communicate here? By making some awkward duck-like sounds to each other. Yep, you heard it. That's the genius idea that they came up with for this. Not to mention, one of them has like a little mohawk-thingy on top of its head, I guess we're supposed to assume that this is the 'Uber-Raptor'? Kind of like the Uber-Morlock from "The Time Machine".

Nevertheless, the end result on-screen is pure comedy. I mean just watching these so-called intelligent raptors "quack-quack" to each other back and forth is priceless.

Forget the Spinosaurus, the Kirby's are the true villains of "Jurassic Park III". Paul and Amanda Kirby (William H. Macy and Tea Leoni) have to be one of the dumbest and most annoying married couples on Earth. His wife is actually the worst half of the two, she claims the limelight of the movie for that. This lady nearly gets everybody killed on several occasions throughout "Jurassic Park III".

Amanda shamelessly wonders about and can't seem to shut her loudmouth despite Dr. Grant's numerous warnings. It's almost comical that she was written like this. I'm surprised that their kid turned out to be more normal than the both of them combined. Forget Jurassic Park, these two morons wouldn't even survive in a zoo.

• During the para-sailing sequence in the beginning, as soon as the guys on the speedboat are killed, Billy and Ben immediately assume the boat is going to blow up because there is a small low-lying patch of rock up ahead in the water. So they disable the rope. Mind you, the boat didn't even blow up. They could have just pulled themselves back down to the boat and started it up again.
• On the plane ride to Isla Sorna, Dr. Grant has a quick dream of a raptor actually talking to him. I know that talking, I mean intelligent, dinosaurs are a running theme in "Jurassic Park III" but was this really necessary? Can it get any more obvious than this?
• This is not so much a flaw as much as it's a disservice to the other 'Jurassic Park' films, but why go to such lengths to have the T-Rex -- the one sole dinosaur that has been portrayed as such a dangerous beast to mess with -- battle it out with the Spinosaurus only to get killed in a few seconds? What kind of crap is this?

So after returning some stolen raptor eggs, Dr. Grant and his newfound buddies run out from the trees onto the beach where a whole platoon of heavily armed soldiers await to rescue them. Wala! That's the end of the movie. You see what I mean by this film being rushed into theaters for a quick buck?

So they got the army guys to come and rescue them, huh? Too bad we didn't get to see them do anything exciting or interesting other than just stand in formation on a beach and escort the survivors to the airlift. Come to think of it, the army was supposed to make an appearance at the end of the first film but that didn't happen due to budgetary reasons.

But now they have the army here and they do... absolutely nothing.

• Get off the goddamn island for once. We've seen enough of it. We don't need a repeat of San Diego from "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" but that doesn't mean we should be forced to fall back onto the island setting.
• No retarded married couples.
• An ending which feels like everything has been neatly wrapped up.
• The fight between T-Rex and Spinosaurus needs to be longer, the T-Rex gets owned way too easily.
• Talking dinosaurs... need I say more?