Jurassic Park III

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Year:	2001
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Joe Johnston
Genre:	Dino-sequel nonsense
Starring:	Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Téa Leoni
Rating:	3/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163025/
Tagline:	This Time It's Not Just A Walk In The Park!
Favourite line:	"Either way... you probably won't get off this island alive."

I am loathe to admit it, but the first Jurassic Park movie is something of a guilty pleasure, a film that I have seen more times than is healthy and can quote virtually line for line as it is playing.
It has a certain character that I find captivating: Spielberg's almost childlike enthusiasm for the subject matter seeps through every frame, his goggle-eyed fascination with the dinosaurs apparent from the first moment they are introduced in a sequence that has the hairs on the back of the neck standing to attention.
So, it was with some reluctance that I sat down to watch the 3rd installment, part 2 having been such a damp squib.

The plot:
Dr. Alan 'Sam Neill' Grant is back, this time convinced by a wealthy couple to act as guide in a fly-past of dino-island number 2, Isla Soma. Inevitably, all is not as it seems.
The pair in question have lost a child on the island - how careless - and have recruited Grant to act not as a guide from t
he air as he believes, but from the ground, as they seek their missing spawn.
As you can probably imagine, he is more than a little miffed.
So the scene is set for a romp across the island, with nerry an opportunity wasted for some full on 'saurus action.
And, in many ways, this is where the movie fails.

In Spielberg's original, he set things up nicely, paced the damn thing to add, you know, tension and drama. Here, the very second the 'plane lands, they are set upon by something altogether massive and escape by the skin of their teeth before in the next scene something else attacks them then some smaller things join in en masse our heroes fleeing for their lives before being ambushed by velociraptors working as a team showing uncanny intelligence and when they escape them something else ghastly wants to strip their flesh before another set of carnivorous beastlies chases them and....and....and Sweet Suffering Jaysus I was so exhausted with the none stop, frenetic nature of the narrative that I genuinely ceased to care.
All out action is fine, but you still need dynamics, you still need something to latch onto in terms of emotional attachment.
Sam Neill is watchable enough reprising his role, though he does seem a touch bored, as does William H. Macy, who was probably wondering what on Earth he was doing in the film in the first place. Tea Leoni tries her best, bless her, but, let's be honest, she's a pretty useléss actréss.
All action, all adrenaline, none stop carnage that, ultimately, wasn't as interesting as that description suggests.