Jurassic Park 3 Review
by Michael Lee

Well, to start with, I got to see a trailer I really wanted to see before the movie on the big screen. That's always a positive thing, and a good way to start. And it's a movie I saw before Tim, so it's almost mandatory to write a review.

To some extent, if you've seen the first two movies, you know how this all works -- a group of people have to survive being attacked by dinosaurs. There isn't much new in this film beyond that, and the special effects that impress in the first film are much more standard in this one. Also, without either Steven Spielberg, Michael Crichton, John Williams, or Jeff Goldblum, you get sort of the feeling that this the B-team at work, but then you realize that they were all in The Lost World, and you realize that the B-Team can do just as well.

There are some interesting elements that this movie raises but doesn't deal with -- how does the knowledge of the existance of an island full of reproducing dinosaurs impact the world? If there isn't active research going on the island, because the island is perceived to be so dangerous, I would have thought that paleontology would be even more important than ever, to get proper research on the animals that existed on the island. But I'm undoubtedly thinking too hard about these things.

This movie, however, is just about some people trying to escape from the middle of an island most of them aren't prepared to be on, surviving predators and monsters for an hour and a half. It's very light weight. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's lean and mean, but it's trying to be.

The movie gives you the one set piece that the previous two movies promised, but never delivered -- a perodactyl scene. As such, it's an impressive little action sequence, as the humans realize that they're under threat from something that can pick them out from the sky. It's the centerpiece of the movie, and is a successful, enjoyable scene.

The movie is just a thrill ride. It isn't a great thrill ride; the first Jurassic Park is better, and it's probably only a better than the second Jurassic Park movie. But it's enjoyable, it's not horrible. It's a fun little monster movie.

Jurassic Park III

Three and a half Beakers
(out of five)

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Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Michael Lee stepped into the MISFITS Website and vanished .... He woke to find himself trapped on the Internet, facing pages that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change the MISFITS Website for the better. His only guide on this journey is Professor Maxwell Misfittle, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Mike can see and hear. And so Mr. Lee finds himself leaping from site to site, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home. Michael previously wrote about A.I.