Dir: Joe Johnston. Cast: Sam Neil, William H. Macy, Tea Leoni, Alessandro Nivola, Trevor Morgan.
Once you’ve seen one Jurassic Park movie than you’ll have seen them all, right? I mean bar the dinosaurs being meaner, the teeth being sharper and the script increasingly non-sensical, they’re all the same film, surely, huh?
Well, yes and no. Because despite there being little difference plot wise - ‘lets get off this island of dinosaurs as quick as fucking possible’ being the general theme across all three movies, it all depends on the characters, how well they’re written and played, and, due to this, how much you sympathy you have when someone has their head ripped off by a passing raptor.
So who do we have this time round? Well everyone from JP2 has thankfully been jettisoned, and Sam Neil the only cast member from the original to properly feature (though it was nice to Laura Dern cameo a couple of times). New characters/fodder include William H. Macy and Tea Leoni as a separated couple, Paul and Amanda, Trevor Morgan as their son Eric, and Alessandro Nivola as one of Grant’s students, Billy. Oh, and a couple of tough looking guys who unsurprisingly don’t make it in to the second act.
It’s not so much that this is a collection of incredible actors, but they gel together nicely, and William H. Macy’s so enjoyable to watch, that it’s hard to dislike the film at all, despite the feeling that you’ve seen it all before. There is a plot somewhere in there too. Alan Grant, cash starved and desperate for funding, agrees to be a tour guide for Macy and Leoni’s flight over the island. But he soon learns it’s a trick, and that Leoni and Macy are infact looking for their lost child who went missing on the island eight weeks ago. Things go wrong, and thus its get the fuck of the island as quick as possible time once again.
Maybe it’s the lack of annoying screaming children that make this so much more enjoyable, as here the kid generally keeps in the background and rarely makes a noise. Like all children should in major blockbusters, obviously. Or maybe it’s the fact that the raptors feature less, that the effects now are simply seamless. Whatever character development there is, it never gets in the way of a big action spectacular, and this movie seems so much more lighter, and fun, than the previous two, and that’s no bad thing. Does exactly what a summer blockbuster should do, no more, no less.
Alex Finch.
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