The most disturbing thing about "Jurassic Park III," at least during Monday night's preview screening, was the number of foolish parents who for some reason brought their 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds to the theater. The film is rated PG-13 for a reason, in this case because of "intense sci-fi terror and violence." Nevertheless, several Hawaii parents seemed to consider these warnings spurious, the bloodcurdling screams of their children notwithstanding. They must know better than Steven Spielberg, the executive producer of this horror claptrap, who won't even allow his own young children to see the "Jurassic Park" series. Dinosaurs, death and
dismemberment:
Bring the kids!Review by Scott Vogel
svogel@starbulletin.comSadly, by the time you're emotionally and intellectually capable of appreciating these movies, you've simply outgrown them, as the latest installment amply demonstrates. It begins with a 14-year-old boy parasailing with an adult companion off the coast of a remote Costa Rican island called Isla Sorna, which is only the first of many improbabilities. In due course the pair become marooned on the island.
Back in the good old U.S.A., Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) is lecturing a packed hall on the intelligence of velociraptors who, he claims, might have become the most highly evolved species on the planet were it not for the cataclysmic event that ended the age of the dinosaurs. Less highly evolved, it appears, are Paul and Amanda Kirby (William H. Macy and Téa Leoni), a thrill-seeking couple for whom a trip to Isla Sorna would be the ultimate extreme vacation, if they could persuade Dr. Grant to be their guide.Grant initially demurs. He has, after all, sneered in the faces of raptors before and cannot possibly produce an original scowl at this point. Nevertheless, he and his sidekick Billy (Alessandro Nivola) are soon on a plane south with the Kirbys, thanks to a check from the latter that reportedly contains many zeros.
Universal Studios informs us that the harrowing plane crash that follows (owing to a dinosaur in the flight path) was mostly shot with the film's stars, rather than stunt doubles. It is certainly intense. No sooner has the plane come to rest uneasily in the jungle treetops than its inhabitants are attacked by carnivorous lizards, who appear poised to pluck them from the wreckage and eat them one by one. It's this scene in particular that children would find horrifying, again judging by the prolonged shrieking at the screening.
In due course we learn, to our relief, that the Kirbys are not rabid, Type A travelers at all, but divorced parents from Enid, Okla., in search of their son Eric (Trevor Morgan), the parasailing boy in scene one. This explains why Leoni in particular seemed sullen from the start (for a while, we thought she was just phoning it in), though it doesn't explain what persuaded a casting director that Leoni might play someone from Enid, Okla.
For much of the rest of the film, the quartet is running for their lives, fleeing dinosaurs of every shape and size, a hobby that leaves them little time to search for Eric. Just as you begin to wonder why the raptors are so zealous in pursuit of this crew, it is revealed that young Billy has stupidly purloined a pair of raptor eggs in hopes of selling them for big bucks back home. Not only do these vicious beasts want their eggs back, they want the group's one mother, Leoni, to return them. (Perhaps raptors are as intelligent as Grant claims. After all, it can't have been easy to pick out Leoni as a mom, given her pixie-like boy's haircut.)
Everything leads up to a frightening land/sea climax that introduces a new reptilian enemy, the dreaded spinosaurus, about which real-life paleontologists have recently discovered new information, all of it passed on to Stan Winston's special effects team and employed to horrifying effect. It's a safe bet that the final sequence -- especially the part where pteranodons' beaks peck mercilessly at fleeing humans -- will produce the intended emotional payoff, not to mention an unintended one, in this case children waking up with nightmares and climbing into their parents' beds. Not that the kiddies won't learn a lesson, mind you (something to the effect that those who take what isn't theirs run the risk of inciting the rage of evil, egg-deprived raptors).
Then again, say what you like about the ferocious velociraptors; at least they take care of their young.
"Jurassic Park III"
Rated PG-13
2.5 stars
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