Jurassic Park 3 (2001) is directed by Joe Johnston, who reportedly shot it without a finished script. It stars Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Tea Leoni, Alessandro Nivola, Trevor Morgan, Michael Jeter, Laura Dern, Bruce A. Young, John Diehl, Taylor Nichols, and Mark Harelik. The film follows Paul (Macy) and Amanda Kirby (Leoni), a goofy, wealthy couple who offer Dr. Alan Grant (Neill) a large sum to act as a guide on their honeymoon flight over Isla Sorna. Because he’s promised they have no intention of actually landing on the island, Grant reluctantly accepts their offer. Upon arrival, Alan and his brash colleague, Billy (Nivola), learn that their employers aren’t the newlyweds they claimed to be, but rather estranged divorcees searching for their teenage son (Morgan), who has recently gone missing on the island. Caught off guard in the most perilous place he can imagine, Grant is forced to utilize his dinosaur expertise to help the group reach safety, preferably with all of their limbs still attached. 

Although the script doesn’t do the characters many favors, the cast is generally strong. Niell’s return to the franchise proves that he hasn’t lost a step, so it’s disappointing that the script fails to develop his character in any meaningful way. The Grant’s relationship with Ellie (Dern) is fun to revisit—I’ll take what I can get—but its exploration ultimately just feels like a regression of their dynamic. Ellie is sidelined in a way that makes you question why she’s even a part of the film in the first place. This is even more odd when you consider the script’s focus on rekindling Paul and Amanda’s relationship—a subplot that would’ve fit Ellie and Grant perfectly. Leoni and Macy deliver energetic performances, but their characters are often portrayed as comically dim-witted, emotionally unstable, immature, and generally inconsistent in their behaviors and abilities. For twenty minutes after they land on the island, all Leoni’s character does is scream so loudly that it gives me a headache every time I watch it. It’s also tough to forgive the couple for their actions that kick off the film. No matter what the script does to redeem them, it doesn’t change the fact that they’re selfish individuals who were willing to trick multiple people into risking their lives on an emotionally charged, suicidal rescue mission. Not to mention, they’re just plain old annoying in an immature, “I want to roast these idiots”-kinda way. Thankfully, the script is aware of how annoying they are and thus finds some effective humor in their otherwise unpleasant personalities. This doesn’t come close to making up for it, but it does make them occasionally palatable.  

The film is yet another step down for the franchise, but there’s still a lot to love about it. The story is just a simplified version of the previous installment (which was simple to begin with), fully transitioning its focus to surface-level dino mayhem and abandoning any ideas that require more than 2 seconds of thought. This allows the experience to be a mostly effective B-movie thrill ride that more willingly embraces the strong horror elements present in the original. A healthy dose of practical effects, combined with CGI, yields dinosaurs that hold up much better than I was expecting. This is also the first installment to feature predators other than a T-Rex and/or velociraptors. The simpler the plots of these films become, the more they rely upon the audience’s childish love of giant, carnivorous lizards. The film doesn’t deliver anything with its story, so it’s a relief that it shakes things up with its creature choices and designs.

The film struggles with its weak, supposedly unfinished screenplay—something that’s evident in the wonky pace. For example, every death in the movie occurs within a 15-minute window. This quickly establishes stakes, but steals a lot of tension from the second act. At least two of these deaths could have been used to add tension and loss to set pieces later in the film, but instead, they feel somewhat wasted. It’s as if the writers couldn’t figure out what to do, so they just decided to give them all the ax.

Along with the anticlimactic ending, this structure makes you wonder what the writers were thinking. Unlike Spielberg, Johnston fails to portray dinosaurs as both wondrous and dangerous in a palatable way. I believe this is because the dinosaurs here are presented as proactive and highly intelligent in a way that makes their violence seem almost personal and petty, less about survival, and far more emotionally driven. It wants us to see these creatures as a formidable challenge to our species in terms of intelligence but also wants us to see them as beautiful creatures whom we should love and respect—a crazy thing to ask the characters (or the audience) to feel about creatures who spent the entire movie not just trying to eat them, but also take petty revenge. This culminates in the film’s final shot, which shows Alan and the group appreciating the beauty and grace of pterodactyls flying beside their helicopter. The thing is, this happens immediately after greeting their severely injured friend, who barely survived being brutally mauled by those same creatures just hours prior. What message are we supposed to take away from that? That you’re an asshole if you dislike a species that consistently attempts to kill you at every opportunity? I’m not sure if I agree with that.

Overall, this is a highly straightforward and surface-level installment in the Jurassic Park franchise that is disappointing as a follow-up to the first two films, but ultimately delivers just enough of the dino mayhem its core audience pays to see. It’s often silly and stupid, yet also swift and exciting. I enjoy the film every time I see it, but it doesn’t do much to support the franchise’s future. It’s cheap, disposable entertainment that targets the “lizard brain” portion of an individual’s psyche, resulting in a reasonably fun time if you set your expectations accordingly. That being said, enjoying dinosaurs is a requirement; It’s most of what the movie offers. If that all sounds good to you, there’s a quality to the experience that’ll make you feel like an 11-year-old kid all over again. C+