Jurassic Park III Review
by Walter Chaw (walter AT filmfreakcentral DOT net)August 3rd, 2001
JURASSIC PARK III
** (out of four)
starring Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Téa Leoni, Alessandro Nivola screenplay by Peter Buchman and Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor directed by Joe Johnston
-a review by Walter Chaw | [email protected]
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_Jurassic Park III_ is completely critic proof, a smirking cash machine with its amplifiers turned to "11." That it happens to be an amazingly tight little film (every single element of its first half predicts a correlative in the second) doesn't excuse its bratty attitude. If _Jurassic Park III_ were the insolent snot-nosed little punk it most resembles, it'd be turning out its lower lip whilst jutting an insouciant chin at potential critics and naysayers: "Go ahead," the pipsqueak would say, "hit me with your best shot."
Okay, here goes.
The action sequences are occasionally gripping, although for the brevity of the film (a scant 85 minutes dripping wet), there's a surprising amount of downtime. And while there are twice as many visual effects in _Jurassic Park III_ as there were in the first two films combined, they come in showcase clusters. To a one, they are either paced so oddly that they point more to a potential greatness than any kind of real thrill (a fitfully entertaining pteronodon attack), are unforgivably truncated (a neat battle between a tyrannosaurus and a spinosaurus), or just disappoint outright (the egregious misuse of the "primate-smart" velociraptors)--and that's when you can see what's happening through the hyper-cuts and murky cinematography.
What should have been a breathless breakneck pursuit/escape sequence involving a whole pack of raptors resolves itself with an extended stand-off situation in which humans and lizards engage in a limp-wristed staring contest, and the ending is so vein-poppingly ludicrous that I have, in my time, imagined more plausible rescues in the sandbox with my army men ("and then here comes the spaceship--ptchoo! ptchoo!"). The denouement, and, frankly, the rest of the film, is so ridiculous, in fact, that something troubling occurred to me: _Jurassic Park III_ is making fun of my having looked forward to it.
Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) is on a dig when a rich couple, Paul and Amanda Kirby (William H. Macy and Téa Leoni), offers his foundation a massive sum of money to accompany them on a flyover of Isla Sorna, the beastie-infested island from the second Jurassic Park film. Predictably, the plane crashes, a resourceful Spielbergian child is introduced, and Dr. Grant is forced to guide a bunch of greenhorns across dino-ridden wilderness.
_Jurassic Park III_ doesn't work very well because it thinks it's smarter than it is--sort of a postmodern _Scream_-type thing with mildly sarcastic attempts at turning the el blando Dr. Grant into a slacker version of Indiana Jones. As written by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, the pair behind the scathing _Citizen Ruth_ and _Election_, there is not a line in _Jurassic Park III_ free of dramatic irony, campy foreshadowing, and Gen-X wry. It's John Kennedy Toole writing about stupid people running around in a literal primordial forest; Infinite Jest if Infinite Jest were about smart dinosaurs. By the eighth or ninth time a character stops another character and whispers, "wait...listen...you hear that?" one either nods wisely, secure that the attempts by Payne and Taylor to mock the _Jurassic Park_ monster formula do not, in fact, include mocking you, or one furrows his brow, wondering if it's a good idea for a film's screenwriters to actually be contemptuous of the project for which they are writing. Knowing genre and subverting it is a good idea if it's done with affection (_Mimic_), but an exceedingly bad one if it's done with snarky derision (_Lake Placid_).
_Jurassic Park III_ would have been a fine movie had bitter wisenheimers like Payne and Taylor not been involved in the dialogue; their contempt is an unwelcome dash of self-knowledge in an environment where Herculean feats of disbelief suspension are the only refuge. Watching the _Jurassic Park_ films is a great deal of fun when you do it with developmentally arrested simpletons like Steven Spielberg and John Williams. It's a good deal less fun with jerks who insist on reminding you that no matter how many times someone warns not to, someone in jungle peril flicks will always use a bullhorn to yell out their location every few minutes.
For as much as I like dinosaurs and giant robots killing and eating (not necessarily in that order) a bunch of idiots, I don't enjoy watching this Darwinian buffet as told by people who not only don't share my joy in the occasional teeth and cheese-fest, but whom are dedicated to explaining to me just exactly why the formula for these things is so stupid.
See, guys, I know it's stupid--what Payne and Taylor don't seem to realize is that it's possible to be too smart for your own good and to underestimate the Jurassic Park audience. For as smooth as their brand of snippy scorn is for abortion politics and the election system, it tastes a little sour in what amounts to a glorified )_Godzilla_ movie.
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