Rating:

Truly, there is only one way to effectively review a movie like this. Jurassic Park III brings with it many temptations to stray away from the even-handed objectivity required in a review. That’s why I’ve devised a completely scientific, peer-approved and awesome method for looking at the film and judging its merits. It’s a little thing I like to call “Jurassic Park III: Hows Come It Sucks So Bad?”

Reason It Sucks So Bad No. 1!
Full on dinosaur action right off the bat.

As soon as our characters—although I really hesitate to call them that—land on the island, this movie’s new chief scary dinosaur, the spinosaurus, busts out of the trees and munches people up and shows himself to the audience in all his glory. The movie’s just begun and there’s nowhere to go. The original Jurassic Park built suspense masterfully. When we think we’re gonna get our first glimpse of a T-Rex, we don’t; he’s held off for later and the tension builds. All through the picture people were talking about how scary and smart and determined to eat you the velociraptors are, but their full terror isn’t unleashed until the movie’s almost at a close. That movie made the audience wait for things, and thus the payoff was all the better. Jurassic Park III, on the other hand, makes you wait for nothing. As a result, it ends up being no more than a monster chase movie (and not a good one), having none of the skillful execution that made the first movie so much more than just “Godzilla at Disney World.”

Reason It Sucks So Bad No. 2!
“This is T-Rex pee? How did you get it?”
“You don’t want to know.”

Yes, actually, I would like very much to know! Everyone would be fascinated to find out how a little kid, living alone on an island inhabited completely by dinosaurs, without any weapons and having only the supplies he could find lying about, was able to procure a vial of T-Rex pee without becoming a Boy Flavored Dino-Treet® in the process. By all accounts, that would be impossible! So when the character says “you don’t want to know” how he did it, what he means is that the screenwriter “actually doesn’t know and is too lazy to find out.”

Reason it Sucks So Bad No. 3!
We’ve been here before and I don’t remember any spinosaurus.

The allegedly fearsome spinosaurus starts stomping about and eating people as soon as they arrive on Isla Sorna. If I remember correctly—and I do—a huge number of people appeared on this very same island in The Lost World and not one of them ever said, “Holy cow, look at that big motherfucker with the sail on his back!”

Reason It Sucks So Bad No. 4!
And speaking of the spinosaurus…

What are you and who cares? Everybody knows what a T-Rex is and that’s why the original Jurassic Park put one all up in our faces. At the time of that movie’s release, the general population was less aware of velociraptors, and so that movie gave us plenty of information so we’d be good and scared. In this travesty of a film, on the other hand, the spinosaurus just shows up and nobody, not even the dinosaur expert, tells us what it is or anything about it. It might as well be Godzilla, King Kong or an alien replicon from beyond the moon, because never once in the film are you given any hint as to how this dinosaur is connected with reality.

Reason It Sucks So Bad No. 5!
Hey, these dinosaurs look like crap!

They sure do, hypothetical movie watcher, they sure do. Contrary to everything I know about the way progress is supposed to happen, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park III are much, much less convincing than those in the earlier movies. Looking at them, you are always painfully aware of the computer trickery used to put them on the screen. Whereas the dinosaurs in the first two films are majestic and terrifying and enable you to believe that they’re honest-to-god real, these pathetic beasties are nothing more than overblown Jar Jars. And then there’s the problem with the velociraptors. In addition to feeling more like the dinosaur from Toy Story than those in the Jurassic Park series, the raptors have been given a redesign that is completely detrimental. Where they once looked like frightening thunder lizards of death, they now just look…peculiar? Like, sort of punk rock iguanas? They’re far more laughable than scary.

Reason It Sucks So Bad No. 6!
Guess what, turns out I’m not dead after all.

Among the characters we’re supposed to be caring about, although we don’t, is Dr. Grant’s grad-student assistant, Billy. What happens to him is that he gets killed and eaten by pterodactyls. There is no disputing this. They kill him and eat him, and the rest of the characters run away, leaving the devil-birds to their feast. But then at the end of the picture, lo and behold, Billy’s just as alive as can be! And he made it to the rescue vehicles of his own accord, apparently, because no explanation is ever given as to how he got there or, more importantly, how he came back to life and reassembled himself from the chunks spread through the spoor of numerous dinosaurs. (By the way, this rescue I mentioned is about one nanometer shy of being a total deus ex machina, and even if it is almost justified by the script it is still a phenomenally absurd “here comes the cavalry” ending.)

So those are the six most serious problems my completely scientific analysis method was able to detect. There are other issues too, of course, but this could go on forever. (A kid in peril again? Can’t we have a movie like this that doesn’t involve squeaky voiced children? The adults are no less endangered by the rampaging monsters, focus on them and leave the annoying pukes at home!) This look back seems has made it abundantly clear that Jurassic Park III: One Too Many is an awful film and a blight upon all mankind, but at least the series couldn’t possibly get any more stupid, right?

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