Jurassic Park III (2001)

I chose to own all three Jurassic Park movies because -- this is Jurassic C-G-I Park with a dinosaur tail on it, yo, and I have a son who loved dinosaurs. Since then, nightmares have replaced some of the love, but these films are classics and he'll enjoy them again someday -- after therapy or maybe another 5 years? Anyway, The Lost World novel had a few narrative threads yet to mine for a third movie, so the makers went back to trying to devise an even bigger (and hence scarier) dinosaur -- even if they somehow forgot to put the actors (and hence us) in even more scarier situations. Sure, a spinosaurus treads scenery a few times and mixes it up with a T-Rex -- and a couple other known dinosaur species are encountered -- but these are merely episodic excursions instead of what could have been dire mortal peril as in the first movie's sustained T-Rex and velociraptor attacks. A few bursts of epinephrine but no adrenaline-spawned pools of flop sweat. At least they got back Sam Neill for one last oh-God-not-dinos-again hurrah. William H. Macy is always great; Tea Leoni was passable. The mercenaries just made for quick dinofodder. (Way to add that sickening bone crunch to every chomp. Yick! How perfunctory yet declasse as scripted deaths go -- did the dinos get a check-em-off shopping list?) The ending is fairly weak. If I had to try and come up with the best scene in the movie, it would take a while but I think I'd pick the dream scene on the plane -- and that says something about the rest of the movie, doesn't it? 3.5 stars.