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The Movie: Steven Spielberg is one of the biggest directors today in Hollywood. So big in fact that DreamWorks is looking for a way to insure his life for over 1 billion dollars. From his first big hit Jaws in 1975 through to 1998's Saving Private Ryan the list of box office hits he has been involved with is amazing. Even more impressive is that he has created two of the most successful movie franchises in history in Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park not to mention the critically acclaimed holocaust drama Schindler's List which was shot entirely in black and white. He has been involved with so many great films it's hard to pick a favourite. In 1993, Spielberg undertook a project with a huge scope. Author Michael Crichton had written a novel about dinosaurs being brought to life by a huge corporation in order to populate an amusement park. The novel was Jurassic Park and soon under Spielberg's guide JP would become a monster hit both finically and technically. Spielberg with the help of George Luca's Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) truly brought the dinosaurs to life in one of the single greatest moments in SFX history. If not for the help from ILM and the sheer genius of three of the best in their respective effects areas Stan Winston, Denis Muran and Phil Tippet, Jurassic Park may have been a huge failure. The effects team held a huge burden on the project and that was could they make look dinosaurs real. They more then succeeded as there work was truly groundbreaking causing people to take notice including Stanley Kubrick who started talking to Spielberg about doing the effects for Supertoys which later became A.I. However that was not the end of the technical advances made with Jurassic Park as it also became the first film to feature DTS Digital Sound. Jurassic Park would go on to earn over 900 million dollars worldwide and spawn a sequel The Lost World that also went on to earn over 300 million worldwide. Money talks and plans for a 3rd sequel were made but with Spielberg busy working on A.I. another director would have to take the helm. That man would be Joe Johnston who had previously directed the special effects film Jumanji. Would he be as successful as Spielberg find out as we go back to Jurassic Park. In the beginning Millionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenbourgh) set out to bring the world a new type of amusement park. One where the kids and their parents could have fun in addition to learning all sorts of educational information. His idea was Jurassic Park, a park with real living dinosaurs. However he lacked the complete financing so in order to get approval from parent company InGen communications he had to invite various experts to the park to get their approval. Among these professionals were Dr Alan Grant (Sam Neil), Dr Ellie Sadler (Laura Dern) and Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). Grant and Sadler were fascinated by the science aspect of it all while Dr Malcolm a so-called chaos theorist believed that everything that could go wrong would. Malcolm was right and the dinosaurs started taking matter in their own hands almost killing the humans on the island. In the second instalment it was learned that InGen had set up a site "B" on Isla Sorna another remote Costa Rican island. Two teams of people were sent to the Island, one to kill and hunt them and one to study them. Where things once again went horribly wrong as people start dying and worse yet the dinosaurs found a way to flee the island on a boat headed for downtown San Francisco. They manage to get off and create carnage throughout the streets eventually being stopped but only after typical amounts of movie destruction. In this second instalment only Dr Ian Malcolm and John Hammond returned from the first one. As the 3rd instalment of this ongoing saga opens we see young Eric (Trevor Morgan) and his father Ben suiting up on a boat to go parasailing. The boat is just off the Costa Rican coast around the area of Isla Sorna. Armed with a video camera, the young boy and his father begin to parasail unaware of the danger of their surroundings. Suddenly the boat towing them is hit hard by a mysterious force and they find themselves headed directly into a cliff. Meanwhile elsewhere Dr Alan Grant (Sam Neil) a professor of Palaeontology at a university is looking for funding for his latest project. Dr Grant has a theory that the deadly Raptors are able to communicate with one another using a series of high pitch screeches. Unable to secure funding he tells his crew that they will have to shut down their dig in three weeks. Just minutes after this he is approached by a man who invites him out to dinner. At dinner we find out that the man is millionaire Paul Kirby (William H. Macy) who wants to hire Grant to give him and his wife Amanda (Tea Leoni) a guided tour of Isla Sorna. Grant doesn't want to give the tour but Paul offers him any amount of money he wants showing a desperation in getting Grant on board. Since the sum is so large and the money can be used to fund Grant's research for many years to come he accepts and invites his lead student Billy (Allesandro Nivola) to come along. So off to Isla Sorna they go and before you know it Grant finds out the Kirby's have lied and they intend to land on the island. It soon becomes clear that they are doing more just a taking a tour. Instead of being a sightseeing adventure it's in actuality a rescue mission as young Eric is the Kirby's son. Hoping to find Eric and leave the island in their plane the Kirby's soon realize just exactly what their up against when the latest dinosaur creation comes and destroys it. A chase is on through the woods of the island both to find Eric and escape to the coast where they would have a better chance at being rescued. In addition to this Dr Grant's theory about intelligence comes through and the Raptors can indeed contact either other making it that much harder for them to escape alive. Jurassic Park 3 is a departure from the first two in that there is little to no character development. In the first two Spielberg spent time setting up a back story for the characters and made them more loveable so that you were routing for them. Johnston does the exact opposite here providing little more then a name and an occupation. Instead Johnston goes for a no-holds barred thrill ride consisting of multiple action scenes in which our heroes nearly die with short breaks so that the audience can digest the last one. At just over 90 minutes JP3 is the shortest in the series while still containing the same number of thrills as it's longer predecessors. I don't go into a movie like Jurassic Park 3 looking for Oscar calibre performances. Doing so wouldn't make much sense. Returning from the original is Sam Neil as Dr Alan Grant who brings back all the qualities that made him one of my favourite characters in the first. Grant doesn't like kids in general yet he tries to be as nice to them as possible when he encounters them. His dry sense of observational humour resonates with me. It may have been 7 years since he's played Grant but he still has him down pat. William H. Macy is one of my favourite comedic actors but he seems out of place in this role. Macy is better suited to a strongly written smart comedy along the lines of his role in State and Main. Tea Leoni who was last seen in the Nicolas Cage dramadey The Family Man is just down right annoying here. All she does throughout the entire 90 minute running time is yell and scream. On top of this she looks fairly unattractive here even before her arrival on the island. Alessandro Nivola who I hadn't seen much of before this is fine as Grant's young protégé who just wants to help Grant and feels responsible for the getting Grant to go to the island. Trevor Morgan who has appeared on ER is excellent as Eric and as far as kid actors go wasn't as annoying as I was expecting him to be. JP3 is not without it's share of problems though there was one that annoyed the heck out of me and that would be the sudden ending. The film is going along and then all out of nowhere it ends. Just as the viewer is getting into it the writers seemed to have run out of ideas and just tacked on the ending. What's even more unbelievable is the ending itself. The writing here reminds me of the short stories I used to write in elementary school where I'd build up a killer narrative then at the last minute become unsure of myself and end it. While this is fine for a kid growing up I prefer my movies to come to a natural conclusion. Handling the writing duties for this film were three guys two of which were responsible for he excellently written 1999 movie Election. It's clear that all the comedy in the movie was written by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor III while the tacked on ending must have been the product of newcomer Peter Buchman. It's like for whatever reason Alexander and Jim were unable to finish the script and Peter was some intern who happened to be getting Joe Johnston his coffee at the right time. JP3 isn't the best movie I've seen this summer but it isn't the worst. At a tad over 90 minutes the pacing for this one was great. Adequate writing for a summer blockbuster, big budget effects and a killer sound mix make JP3 a summer blockbuster in the truest sense of the word. The tacked on ending shows that they are trying to keep doors open for a 4th film which I think is a big mistake. There are only so many ways you can have a dinosaur chase and attack humans on an island. Lacking any real ties to the first film JP3 is a sequel made to make some money. As a summer blockbuster one could do much worse. Still let's hope this is our last trip to Jurassic Park. Reviewed by Mark McLeod 7/20/01 |