Jurassic Park III

"Jurassic Park III" is simply an awful movie; there is no way around it. Given the fact that as a youthful teenager my high-school band once adopted the moniker Jurassic Park for about a week in honour of this once mighty colossus (although who knows what we would have called ourselves if we had seen it first), it pains me to point out that this emperor has no clothes. Lacking plot, acting and any semblance of originality in the slightest, "JP3" is one long, pointless chase scene until the movie's horrific anti-climax and lacklustre ending. It doesn't matter how real the dinosaurs look (in some cases very and in others, well, not so much), if "Godzilla" (the American atrocity) taught us anything it is that while you can lead a computer-generated monster to untold on-screen carnage, you can't make it act (and "Final Fantasy" substantiated that claim). You'd expect better from a director that was once associate producer on unquestionably the greatest Val Kilmer movie of all-time, "Willow," but such is heartbreakingly not the case. Sam Neill reprises his role as Doctor Grant, (perhaps lamenting missing out on the cash-cow that was "The Lost World: Jurassic Park"), who, along with colleague Billy (Alessandro Nivola), is tricked into accompanying a disaster in the making rescue to the second Jurassic Park by a couple, played by William H. Macy and Tea Leoni, in search of their lost son. The rest writes itself, because it's obvious no one else did. After being marooned on the island, the three guides (or guys who'd be wearing the red shirts in "Star Trek") are quickly turned into dino chow while the survivors search for the missing boy and a way off. Taking over the role of T-Rex is a new, badder-ass dino dubbed Spineosaur (actually it's not really dubbed anything in the movie but you have to call it something), which may or may not have actually existed, it continually stalks the survivors and sure looks cool when it kills a T-Rex, but it does little else. The raptors (without Vince Carter) make an appearance — sure they can now talk to each other, which also may never have happened but what the hell! — however, they appear fleetingly and lack the coolness so prevalent in the first two. Even the addition of flying Pteranodons fails to liven up the movie. "Deep Blue Sea" may have been a complete and utter rip off of "Jaws" and "Aliens," but at least it drew from two sources, and "Jurassic Park" merely imitates itself; like a photocopy of a photocopy, the quality degrades until the image is garbage, much like this film.