Only in a summer season that's offered such "classics" as Tomb Raider, Pearl Harbor, Evolution and Final Fantasy could I rank Jurassic Park 3 among the best movies out there. If only there had been a bit more meat and a little less corn.

The prospect of making another Jurassic Park movie must have been an easy decision to make. The first two movies grossed over $520 million combined in the U.S alone, so it was merely a matter of when. Unfortunately, the four years that have passed since the supremely weak Lost World hit theaters apparently wasn't enough time. In a desperate effort to get this sequel into the theaters this summer, the producers ended up sacrificing quality for a plum release date. Surely four whole years is enough time to come up with something better than this.

A group of actors gets dumped in the jungle and then run away from dinosaurs...with varying degrees of success. Sound familiar? Unless you're making Jurassic Park 3 your first foray into the world of cinematic paleantology, then you've seen this concept done to death by now. This is a concept which simply boggles my mind. This movie is a dead lock to gross at least $150 million, so why not just try something a little different? And just casting new actors doesn't count. That's not creativity; that's just restocking the buffet table.

The "plot" this time around has a bunch of goofballs dumped onto a dino-infested island under mysterious pretenses. That's it. That's the story. I realize that I covered this already, but that's still one time LESS than this series has. Hey, how about having these apparently fertile dinos slowly invading some local Costa Rican villages? There's an new slant. Each Jurassic Park flick takes great pains to instill some credibility in relation to how these creatures can procreate. So WHY is the next logical step ignored? Eventually Isla Nubla and Sluba are gonna get overpopulated. But I guess we'll see those exploits in maybe Jurassic Park 8: Jurassicker!. By that time, we'll have John Carpenter directing and maybe then we'll have some real fun!

There's been a lot of pre-release press on this movie, claiming that this installment is notably darker and more violent than its predecessors. To that I simply say "Bull Poop". This latest chapter has a body count that's so low, it could have been rated G. Not to spoil anything, but the number of people who become dino kibble in this film is somewhere between 5 and 7...and most of them are dispatched offscreen. Call me a sociopath if you like, but when I plunk down 8 bucks for a Dinosaur Movie, I don't want the most obnoxious character onscreen to survive. Clerks has a higher body count than this movie. I want carnage, not contrivances.

And this is a film that seemingly lives on contrivances, many of which make absolutely no sense. In a scene halfway through the movie, Dr. Grant turns to another character and asks how they actually acquired a beaker full of T-Rex peepee. The other character replies "Don't ask", and this is a script that is riddled with several such "Don't Ask" issues. Baldfaced plot devices (a handy "Raptor Call" doohickey and Macy's aversion to swimming, to list only two) are casually dropped throughout the early parts of the script, mainly so the audience won't go "Huh? What?" when Dr. Grant finally uses the silly flute and Macy starts dog-paddling. It's called lazy writing and although you don't expect Mamet-like wordplay in a movie like Jurassic Park 3, it would be nice if the audience were treated as if they were smarter than ferrets. But this is a movie that was literally being "made up as they went along". As in the script was being written (and re-written) throughout the production. Imagine riding on a train while laying the tracks at the same time, and you'll get an idea of how these things usually turn out.

Sam Neill returns to play Dr. Grant after skipping The Lost World. He does this probably for the same reason his character decides to return to Dino Island: Huge fluffy piles of cash. New to the series is William H. Macy, Tea Leoni, Michael Jeter and Alessandro Nivola, all of whom convincingly play potential food. Macy and Nivola offer strong performances, while Leoni...doesn't. Laura Dern appears in a glorified cameo, reprising her role from the original film, while Jeff Goldblum is nowhere to be found. (Thankfully, some might say.)

The main problem with Jurassic Park 3 is not that food isn't tasty; it's just that the portions are too small. Aside from an extended sequence involving a parachute and one royally P.O.ed dino-bird, the action scenes leave something to be desired, mainly due to their brevity. And don't even get me started on the final 5 minutes of the film. Trust me when I say that this movie ends on perhaps the biggest "tease" ever set on film.

Still, this is a summer movie that at least delivers some of the goods. Although delivered in a criminally episodic fashion, the creature scenes are often quite exciting. There's enough to recommend in Jurassic Park 3, partially thanks to a solid cast, but mainly because it's a lot more fun than The Lost World.

And technically...shouldn't this movie be called Jurassic Park 3: Lost World 2? :^)

Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older