Classic Movie Review: 'Jurassic Park 3'

Jurassic Park 3 (2001)

Directed by Joe Johnston

Written by Peter Buchman, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor

Starring Sam Neill, Tea Leoni, William H. Macy, Alessandro Nivola

Release Date July 18th, 2001

Published June 14th, 2023

After having compromised to make arguably the worst movie of his remarkable career, The Lost World Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg was finally ready to leave the dinosaurs behind. There was no amount of money that studio executives could promise Spielberg in order to get him back in the director's chair for Jurassic Park 3. That said, staying on as Executive Producer, and retaining his lucrative back end deal, Spielberg did have a hand in choosing his directorial successor.

Joe Johnston is a long time friend and collaborator of Steven Spielberg and happened to be coming off a pair of well liked and successful films, the 1995 blockbuster, Jumanji, and the critically beloved 1999 drama, October Sky. That plus having worked behind the scenes on each of the previous Jurassic Park movies made Johnston the most natural choice to pick up the reigns on the popular franchise. With Johnston came a new writing team for Jurassic Park 3. Out was writer David Koepp and in was the unlikely duo of Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, fresh off the success of very non-Jurassic Park indie hits Citizen Ruth and Election.

It's strange to think that Alexander Payne chose to follow up Election, a black comedy of razor sharp wit, with something as wit-free as Jurassic Park 3. Much like Spielberg did his career worst work on The Lost World Jurassic Park, it would be fair to say that Jurassic Park 3 marks a low point in the career of Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor. A paycheck is a paycheck however, and being hot off of a critical and commercial hit seems to have created the strange cosmic coincidences needed to put the future auteurs behind Sideways, About Schmidt, and Nebraska, into the Jurassic Park universe.

That said, while I do think this is the worst script of the career of Payne and Taylor, that doesn't mean the movie is that bad. Jurassic Park 3 is actually an improvement over The Lost World Jurassic Park. Director Joe Johnston smartly keeps his Jurassic Park movie under 100 minutes in length and maintains a frenetic pace throughout its 96 minute runtime. A script this thin could not sustain a movie much longer than that, especially with characters this obnoxious and simplistic. Making Jurassic Park 3 any longer than 96 minutes would be an agonizing watch. As it is, it's not great but it is fast and the action is genuinely well directed.

Jurassic Park 3 returns Sam Neill to the role of Dr. Alan Grant. After being greatly missed in The Lost World Jurassic Park, having Neill back in Jurassic Park 3 is, at the very least, a welcome bit of nostalgia. Also briefly back is Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler. Her inclusion here is perfunctory and convenient, a loving nod to the original Jurassic Park. Sadly, Dern is only here in Jurassic Park 3 to be used as needed by the script to underline a plot point early on and provide a convenient ending for the film.

Sorry, my cynicism keeps sneaking through. I was talking about being happy to see Dr. Grant again. Sam Neill is a steady, calming, soothing presence in Jurassic Park 3. He's an absolute necessity to the film as he provides a grounded element amid the chaotic special effects frenzy that Joe Johnston is unleashing in Jurassic Park 3. It's easy to see where Johnston's work on Jumanji influenced his work here. Much like Jumanji, Jurassic Park 3 is at its best when it doesn't stop running, upping the stakes, and being an action movie.

The plot of Jurassic Park 3 kicks in when Dr. Grant receives an offer to play aerial tour guide for a rich married couple. Paul and Amanda Kirby (William H. Macy and Tea Leoni) have charted a plane to fly over Isla Sorna, the second of John Hammond's dinosaur islands, and the location of the last movie, The Lost World Jurassic Park. Grant is promised that the plane will not land on the island and that he will just narrate a few facts about what few dinosaurs can be seen during the flyover. What he doesn't know is that he's actually on a dangerous rescue mission. In a convoluted opening sequence, Paul and Amanda's young son, Eric has been stranded on the island.

The crew aboard the plane are actually mercenaries who've been hired to extract the boy from the island. Naturally, things don't go well and people end up getting eaten by dinosaurs. Since we don't know the names of the actors playing the mercenaries, and they lack what I like to call 'main character powers,' they're the first to go. The only name supporting actor, Michael Jeter, is also doomed for being a liar and a bit of a weasel, bad guys getting ugly comeuppance is a trope of the Jurassic Park films, aside from John Hammond, the greatest villain of the series, who gets to escape because he's played by kindly grandpa, Richard Attenborough.

Main character powers are a problem for all of the Jurassic Park films but particularly for this movie. If you are a main character in the Jurassic Park universe, your chances of survival are very, very, high and thus, the drama when you are being menaced by a dinosaur is limited. Not one time in Jurassic Park 3 did I believe that Neill, Macy, or Leoni were in any danger. Main character powers are then extended also to Alessandro Nivola who survives one of the most exciting and heroic dinosaur attacks in the film. His improbable survival, instead of being a heartwarming moment, feels like a major cop out that compromises the danger of Jurassic Park 3.

The same could be said for the Deus Ex Machina introduced to save our main characters from predatorial raptors. A device is introduced early on and, much like Chekhov's gun, once it is introduced in the first act, it must be deployed in the third act. The rudimentary script of Jurassic Park 3 delivers on that predictable promise in a scene that feels quite silly and renders the once fearsome raptors as pawns of a script desperately padding out its action. We should be terrified for our main characters, the raptors of the original Jurassic Park, were legitimately horror movie villains. Here, they are easily duped by a convoluted plot device.

There I go being cynical again. Wasn't I just saying that I kind of liked this movie? I really did. Once we get to the third act and Macy and Leoni's characters morph from obnoxious, rich, caricatures, to genuine loving and earnest parents, the movie really starts to hum. A scene inside of a giant bird cage for flying dinosaurs is exceptionally well staged, filled with excitement and edited with terrific momentum, if not a great deal of suspense. Joe Johnston is great at making chaotic action scenes that move the plot forward rather than being bogged down in the frenzied special effects.

Johnston shows that talent again in another terrific action sequence aboard a boat. Each of these sequences build to moments when characters who haven't been heroic during the previous two acts, find the courage to be heroic in the third act. William H. Macy's arc in the film may be obvious but the payoff of his becoming a brave hero is really great. I had a strong dislike for Macy's performance through much of Jurassic Park 3 but this moment in the third act is a full redemption for the character and for Macy's performance.

Jurassic Park 3 is a mixed bag. In many ways it's not great. There is little suspense, few surprises, and a very, very simplistic, bordering on dimwitted, script. On the other hand, it's an improvement over The Lost World Jurassic Park due to being shorter, faster, and featuring better special effects, and a better big bad dinosaur. The characters get better throughout Jurassic Park 3, especially after we shed the lesser known actors and spend time with our main characters. Sam Neill is a key presence here, his steady, ingenious performance, his brains over brawn action hero, remains fresh even in a third film in a blockbuster franchise. Neill is the best thing about all of the Jurassic Park films that isn't a massive CGI dinosaur.

Jurassic Park 3 was recently the subject of a retrospective on the original Jurassic Park trilogy, timed for the 30th anniversary of the release of Jurassic Park on June 11th, 1993. That retrospective was the subject of the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast where myself, and my co-hosts, novice film lover, Bob, and artist and horror expert, Jeff Lassiter, talk about as many new release movies as we can get to in a week. Along with that, we cover at least one classic film every week which brought us to our Jurassic Park retrospective. You can find the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

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