Jurassic Park 3 (2001) Dir: Joe Johnston
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This, the third film in the franchise, was actually my favourite of the three films as a child. Now, when considering how good the first film is, I was not exactly expecting to have that opinion as an adult. That said, I was still quite hopeful that I'd enjoy it, even with Joe Johnston directing instead of Steven Spielberg.
The visuals definitely looked better than the second film - it was no contest. I love the physical effects in these films, they really were, and are, special. The dinosaurs look great. The CGI is still a bit suspect, but I can forgive that considering how old the films are.
I actually thought that the set-up wasn't that bad, honestly. As for the rest of the narrative, I think that people are a bit too harsh on it. Is it on the level of the first film? Not even close - but it's still a good time. And even though the writing was pretty poor, and there wasn't nearly enough T-Rex in it, I still liked most of what I saw. I'm sure that's partly nostalgia, but I still believe it's better than people say.
Sam Neill may not have been as excellent as he was in the first film, but I still liked his acting a fair amount. He was still rather convincing, and maintained his solid screen presence just about the whole way through. He was easily the best actor in the film, all things considered.
William H. Macy provided moments of humour and decent acting, but this definitely wasn't his best performance. He had fine enough chemistry with Téa Leoni at least, who herself had a pretty average time of it. Even though I wasn't wholly convinced by either, they were still the best of the rest after Neill.
There were a number of adequate, though not exceptional, performances from the remaining supporting cast members - those being Alessandro Nivola, Trevor Morgan, Michael Jeter and, albeit briefly, the familiar face of Laura Dern.
Overall, although I certainly saw a lot of issues with the film, I still have a surprising amount of sentimental love for it. There's a lot of great dinosaur-based action, and it is a lot more enjoyable than the second film, that much is for certain. For me, this film is worth enduring the bad writing just to see all the dinosaur bits.
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