By Walid Habboub
Before I get into whether the third installment of the Jurassic Park franchise is worth your hard-earned money, I'll just throw out the fact that I liked The Lost World better than Jurassic Park. In fact, I liked it a lot better than Jurassic Park. The Lost World had the perfect balance of awe and edge-of-your-seat-terror that is critical to the effectiveness of a solid action movie. I also think it was Steven Spielberg doing what he is best at, creating and maintaining high tension that really packs a punch in his action movies. The Lost World really showed off Spielberg's skill; unfortunately, this skill is not carried over into JP3 by director Joe Johnston.
The biggest failing of JP3 is not the lack of plot or any noticeable storyline; these are, after all, a staple of all action films. The biggest failing of JP3 is that it does not create that sustained sense of danger for the characters, and therefore suffers from what seems like familiaratosis. There definitely is a sense of prevailing danger throughout the motion picture, and this is evident in the opening minutes of the film; however, the movie often loses momentum and a viewer's - well, this viewer's - interest along the way.
The film makes no bones about the fact that it's just a people-in-catastrophic-distress action film, where the laws of logic are often stretched. For one thing, we are told that a child, not even in his teens yet, survives on an island full of ferocious dinosaurs for eight weeks, and a group of adults barely lasts two days, even with the help of Dr. Allan Grant, played by the returning Sam Neill, who battled the dinosaurs in the first Jurassic Park. In addition, the movie defeats many of its own rules of logic, and while it takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to most of the story, the leaps of faith are large enough to disrupt the experience.
Adding to all this is the trend of having action sequences that are cool and stand out visually from other action scenes, while not necessarily having any real tension-filled sequences. For example, the jewel in the crown of The Lost World is the incredibly well-done scene of the trailer hanging over the cliff. In this, we see Julianne Moore in the most precarious of positions, where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. JP3 offers us a parachuting stunt pulled straight out of a 007 movie. None of the scenes come close to matching the excitement of the first two films. Another problem I had with the film is that the dinosaurs had so very little prey to hunt, and the number of human deaths was so minimal and contained in the first act.
The movie is not a total failure. It is oddly funny at times when it takes time to present its one-dimensional characters, but that's mostly because the movie makes fun of how bad it could have been. One of the bonuses of the film is that it kept a brisk pace and did not try to force the issue. It seemed that the director, Joe Johnston, knew what he had and presented the strengths of the film as best he could.
Unfortunately, the movie comes across flat, mainly due to its vacuous action scenes. More human death would have been nice, and certainly more tension would have been nice. As it is, the film is the natural evolution of the franchise, which went from a scary, eye-opening, awe-filled Jurassic Park to a fear-inducing, less awe-filled, tense action-fest in The Lost World to an action-filled, hide-and-seek quickie in Jurassic Park III. Perhaps the fourth installment will be a bit more original in its presentation and will show the viewer a bit more. It's difficult to argue with the success of the franchise so far, but the hope is that the evolution of the franchise will take a step back before taking a step forward.
