Copyright
© 2001 by
Michael
Segers,
All rights Reserved
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Check
out 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
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.
POPCORN
For tamer dinosaurs, let me refer you to Dinosaur World, the park in
Plant City, Florida where I work—and maintain the web
site, where you can find dinosaur jokes, dinosaur e-mail cards, and even a
daily update of news about dinosaurs. I become more and more convinced
that dinosaurs did not go extinct: they've just been hiding out on the Internet,
waiting for us to find them. Keep
your feet dry, your heart full of noble thoughts, and your good self off the
buffet at the latest Jurassic get-together.