| Product: |
Jurassic Park 3 (DVD) |
| Date: |
24/07/01 (150 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: None
Disadvantages: It's Crap
What do you call a dinosaur with no eyes?
Dooyoothinkhesawus
Well what if it had no legs, either?
Dooyoostillthinkhesawus
See that? That’s not just a lame start to an opinion about a dinosaur movie. Nope. It’s much more clever then you think. Those jokes are old and boring. You’ve heard them both before. I’m reviewing Jurassic Park 3. Three. III. Thu-ree. The third. Do I have to roar it out for you?
Let’s get started. First, allow me to address directly the 3.7% of you that have never actually seen Jurassic Park, or its sequel. In fact, let’s been even more specific – I’m talking to the 2.9% of you that haven’t seen them, and also don’t have a clue what they’re about. Sorry to do this, but I the moment I presume that NO ONE could possibly have avoided any particular movie, no matter how well-marketed, is the moment I leap into the ocean with raw meat cellotaped to my face.
The idea behind the series is actually kinda neat, and, at first, kinda clever. Scientists discover a perfectly preserved mosquito hailing from then Jurassic Period of evolution, during which the world was ran by dinosaurs. Using the DNA samples extracted from the bug, these scientists manage to re-create living, breathing examples of the beasts themselves. Being nasty humans, they then confine the creatures to an Island and create a ‘theme park’ to earn a fast buck. Lovely. What doesn’t happen, is that the scientists are proven correct in their estimation of how the park will work. Consequently, another thing that doesn’t happen is that the dinosaurs reside happily within their feeble metal confinements. People don’t live, peace is not maintained, and Spielberg doesn’t make a thousand-billion-trillion-million dollars from people stupid enough to accept poor script-writing for special effects. Confused? Good – that
’ll teach ya not to follow the hype like everyone else. Bloody hippy. The sequel repeats the formula, only causally chucks in a Godzilla rip-off because realistic dinosaurs were only amazing the first time. That’s Jurassic Park I and II.
I would have hoped that, by number III, we would have realised how stupid we’ve been. Years from now, classes of children will study films such as Jurassic Park in their Media Studies lessons (which will replace English and Mathematics as most important subjects, btw) as an early example of special effects cinema. And they’ll laugh at what we were prepared to indulge, just to see some computer graphics. People justify shite cinema by lowing their expectations. “No one takes films like this seriously – they’re mean to be crap!”. Right, ok.
But why? Why just accept it and rationalise it, instead of demanding better? Why excuse paper-thin story-lines, nothing characters and thought-less scripts, just so we can have a peek at the latest technology? I admire films like Armageddon, that at least try to offer some depth while at the same time show-casing special effects.
Jurassic Park III is a terrible, terrible film. What makes it the cash-cow of the summer, is that we people have already told ourselves what to expect – that way we can indulge our curiosity without getting upset. Stupid films for stupid people? Well, you said it, not me (ok so I said it, but I’m allowed to because I’m including myself in the equation, since I saw the film at the cinema yesterday. I only went so I could be cynical about it on Dooyoo though, so really we’re back to square one).
It’s terrible. Unoriginal, bland, poorly-scripted, under-developed, predictable, repeatative,boring, cliched,obviousuninventivelameothernegativeadjecti ves…
… Likeable.
Oops - cat’s out the bag. Where̵
7;s my shotgun?
Yes, it’s likeable. Yes, as you were going to tell me anyway - we don’t always want depth and heavy-scripting. But fun can be quality, don’t forget that. Likeable is no excuse.
Joe Johnston takes over from Spielberg, and dilutes the formula even further. There’s barely even the usual polite stab at a story-line. In search of a missing child, our cast unwittingly take a one-way ticket back to Jurassic Park – that means Sam Neil (Scientist from JP1), William H Macy (Father of missing boy), Tea Leoni (Mother of missing boy), Alesandro Nivola (Neil’s protégé), John Diehl (disposable sub-character #1), Micheal Jeter (#2) and Bruce Young (#3) looking for Trevor Morgan (missing boy). The quality of acting doesn’t really merit comment, since none of the cast are given anything like a testing piece of dialogue, though if you’re going to get all shifty about it though – Sam Neil is as competent as ever, Macy is perhaps the most convincing and the rest are just ok, acceptable. However, actors can only be as good as their script, so none of the cast here can really win. They obviously just did it for the money, which sums things up nicely.
Am I allowed to find it frustrating without being branded a spoil-sport? Hope so. Sitting in the cinema, I felt a worrying urge to stand up and start shouting at everybody. I imagined a crazy scene where I rounded them all up with a speaker-phone and asked them what exactly that they thought they were doing. It’s tripe, and it’s not ok because it’s fun. Not only had the writers been cheeky enough to give the film the simplest of story-lines – he/she can’t even get that right. Big, fat, ugly holes. As if the child could survive 8 weeks alone. Straight out of The Jungle Book, only with less sing-a-long. What else can I moan about? Oh yeah – the fact that this film can’t even fulfil th
e most modest of targets it’s set itself. The tense moments aren’t tense – they’re predictable. I lost count of how many times I witnessed this formula in the same 100 minutes (approx) – Sam Neil leads the gang into a new area, sees an egg/pile of crap/other clue only a scientist would recognise, then dramatically peers up to see a dinosaur of some kind. Then they all run away. Stumble, realise, witness, run, repeat. No inventive deaths, no surprises. The ones you knew would die, died, and the ones you knew would live, live. Every cliché in the book.
And get this. Even the special effects aren’t that special. Yep, honestly. Sorry to shatter the only thing we could be sure of, but it’s my job to tell the truth. They’re adequate. No more ‘special’ then in the first film, or then other films in the genre. Even the films largest selling-point – i.e. the dinosaurs, are under-used. You can tell they realised that, when half-way through we get some token eye-candy shots of the nice dinosaurs eating trees coupled with irrelevant dialogue.
Sound-track wise, we’re treated to more lack of imagination. The same musical score that was special in Jurassic Park, is again used in Jurassic Park III. This laziness on behalf of the producers is classic, and only convinces you that you’ve seen everything on display twice before.
In conclusion then. It’s worse then you were prepared to accept. Honestly. Nothing saves it, it fails in every respect. It’s lazy, it’s insulted, it’s not just a bad big-budget action movie, it’s a bad bad big-budget action movie. It adds nothing to the series, it adds nothing to anything. Thankfully it’s short.
Think about the millions of pounds spend on Jurassic Park III. If you care even a little about art, then that thought should make you feel sick and dizzy. If we all know ab
out bad, big-budget movies, then why do they exist? Hmm? Because we’re suckers for hype. Obey the marketing, arrive in our hordes. They’re only there because we let them. Realise the power of audience for Christ’s sake – stop indulging complete tripe like Jurassic Park III, it's not an obligation. If you want to drop your jaw at something, watch a film like Clerks and fill your pants for the right reasons. Let’s demand more, and make things better for all of us. Please.
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