JURASSIC PARK III Reviewed

ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE

Jurassic Park III

With movies like Jurassic Park III, we don’t need theme park thrill rides. This ride begins in the middle of an island, and all you gotta do is get to the coast. Along the way, pick up the lost boy, lose some henchmen (the old horror movie hierarchy or caste system all over again: look how soon the black guy becomes dino-chow), track the terrible new carnivore (spinosaurus) by the sound of a cell-phone it swallowed, duck the pteranodons, and then—wish I could say I was joking—send in the Marines! Along the way, throw in some of the hokiest, most irrelevant scares since last year’s What Lies Beneath . Something crashes through the trees, but it’s not a dinosaur. Something makes the staircase groan and shake, but it is not a dinosaur. A thrill ride? This is more like a fun house, without the fun.

So much of the charm of the original Jurassic Park is missing. Yes, charm, the charm of having some degree of human interest, of seeing people that you could really care about. Here, these folks just seem like rejects from a soap opera. William H. Macy and Téa Leoni play an estranged couple, drawn together to find their son, who has been lost on the island where some new dinosaurs have been living. (Hey, science fiction buffs? Leoni and Macy as a couple?) With lies and money (only to fund his field work, of course), they persuade the redoubtable Sam Neill’s paleontologist to join them.

Other charms are missing. How about a little interaction among the characters? Say, why not have Leoni and junior paleontologist Alessandro Nivola (who seems to be sweating testosterone), uh, go on a dig, or at least, dig each other. As it plays out, the human beings are the fossils in this venture.

The dinosaurs could be more fun. Poor T. rex has fallen on bad times. Last summer, the villain of Dinosaur was carnotaurus. This summer, in a confrontation with the not so well-known but every bit as fearsome spinosaurus, T. rex.… Oh, I don’t want to spoil it for you. There is some lunacy about raptors communicating. Well, if you are going to put that idea out there for us, why not do something with it?

Why not give us something? The film is rated PG-13. When I saw it, most of the audience seemed to be below six, and I’m not sure that that is a good thing, with all the violence. On the other hand, there needs to be some sort of rating for a film to suggest that it is not suited for anyone over thirteen, anyone who wants a little heart and soul with all the flesh and blood.

Maybe my memory is slipping, but it seemed that some of the scenes of dinosaurs were rehashed from the original Jurassic Park. Digging through dino-doo-doo is reprised, much to the puzzlement of a wandering ceratosaurus, which seems to be wondering, just what kind of creature would do something like that. Looking back on this film, I wonder what kind of creature would do something like this. Please, let's face it: it's time for these dinos to go extinct. Keep your feet dry, your heart full of noble thoughts, and your good self off the buffet at the latest Jurassic get-together.