| Back in 1993, before Samuel L. Jackson was famous and widely regarded as the coolest man on the planet, he had a fairly small and unmemorbale role in that year's biggest movie; Jurassic Park. A reasonably faithful of the superb Michael Crichton novel, Steven Spielberg directed Sam Neill's Doctor Alan Grant, Jeff Goldblum's Doctor Ian Malcolm, and Hollywood's first computer-generated dinosaurs in the malfunctioning theme park. Goldblum reprised his role for the 1997 sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park; Spielberg's first movie after his four-year hiatus. This time very loosely based upon Crichton's work, nasty capitalists InGen try to bring some dinosaurs from a second dino-ridden island. Now Spielberg executive produces Jurassic park III, with his old mate Joe Johnston directing a movie "based on an idea by Steven Spielberg." That idea seems to have been, "bunch of people get stuck on island full of dinosaurs, have to escape." There is some a nice familiar feeling as the tiny aircraft heads towards towards the island of big green hills and deep valleys, that could hide a colony of dinosaurs, to the accompaniment of the John Williams score. Sam Neill is back as Doctor Grant, this time tricked by the Kirby family (William H. Macy and Tea Leone) into going to Isla Sorna (Site B From The Lost World) to rescue their lost son. Although featuring the Kirby boy, JP3 is happily lacking the kind of embarrasing, wise-cracking kids that Spielberg feels the need to include for his young audience to relate to or whatever. This is the better movie for it, a slightly darker action movie, but with a shortfall of potential human victims, compared to Lost World. There is much less exposition on display here too, or discussion on the morality of genetic engineering, and its exploitation for commercial purposes. This is a very entertaining, exciting movie in its own right, but in the wider context of the Jurassic Park franchise, it is more of the same. It is a little disappointing that they could not found a new twist. The Lost World ended with a T-Rex rampaging through San Diego, and JP3 would have benefitted from something similar. Apparently an early idea had veloceraptors living in the sewers under a city, but the only thing new in this movie are some new species showcased. The crocodile-like spinosaurus is bigger than the T-Rex (and the two have a really cool fight), and provides a nice spin on the Peter Pan crocodile warning-system. and the evil-looking pteradons escape their massive aviary. The raptors, too, are shown to have a sinister level of intelligence, previously only hinted at. A very well made, solidly entertaining blockbuster though. 8/10. |
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| JURASSIC PARK III Director: Joe Johnston Producers: Larry J. Franco & Kathleen Kennedy Screenplay: Peter Buchman, Jim Taylor & Alexander Payne UK Release Date: 20/07/2001 Certificate: PG |
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