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Jurassic Park III opens with 14-year-old Eric (Trevor Morgan) enjoying a touristy paraglide (called The Dino –Soar) with his mother's boyfriend over Isla Sorna—the site of an abandoned dinosaur breeding facility. As you may guess, an accident happens. Eric's divorced parents Paul and Amanda Kirby, (William H. Macy and Tea Leoni) pose as filthy rich adventure seekers and—claiming they only want a peep into dinosaur land—they con paleontologists Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Billy Brennan (Alessandro Nivola) into flying with them over the island. Their plane crashes, of course, or there would be no story.
Not that the story is such a great one you'd be sorry not to see the movie. Really, you watch
Jurassic III to see if the mechanical dinosaurs here are better than in Jurassic Park I and II. You watch out for new gadgets, gizmos, gimmicks. You're
curious to see what obstacles the characters will face this time, and you don't really mind that their acting is just a shade better than in a school play because this
characters are dinosaur lunch anyway. If that's your mind set while watching, you might get to enjoy it, even appreciate that there are new "creations" and "thrills" like the
flying dinos, cute and endearing dino puppies traipsing about the forest floor, a winged mommy dinosaur dropping a boy right into the mouths of her ravenous nestlings, etc.
But through all that the viewer could get a sneaking feeling that the whole movie might be an advertising vehicle for a cellphone. Picture this: a gigantic spinosaurus happens
to swallow a cellphone along with the user and it manages to always ring in time to warn the fleeing characters. (A cellphone, ringing from the belly of a dinosaur? Huh?
Aren't cellphones supposed to conk out upon contact with water?) Then, just when they think they've lost the phone for good, it rings again, but there's no dino in sight, so
guess where they find it? In a heap of dino dung, of course, along with a leg bone from its victim! And it's still ringing till the end—Oh, please give us a brrreak!
Can you expect to learn a moral lesson out of Jurassic III? Well, maybe, if you're observant
enough. It's hard to say if this is in the director's mind but in the film may be noticed two elements that may seem disconnected but in reality speak of the same value:
parents as protector and preserver of life and family. One: The divorced couple get together—see the lengths they'd go to in order to find a lost son. Two: Somebody steals
two eggs from a dinosaur's nest—and the beasts pursue the group to the ends of the earth to retrieve the stolen eggs. Animal or human, they're doing something to preserve
the species.
(Date reviewed: July 27, 2001)
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