Jurassic Park III (Rifftrax Presents)

Film Year:  2001
Genre:  Science Fiction, Adventure, Thriller
Director:  Joe Johnston
Starring:  Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Tea Leoni, Alessandro Nivola, Trevor Morgan, Michael Jeter, Laura Dern
Rifftrax Year:  2011
Riffer:  Matthew J. Elliott

The Movie

Jurassic Park III was a movie made for people who are bored during the other films and just grumble "Just get to the dinosaurs already!"  It's a very impatient movie, getting to the island and letting a carnivore chow down on our hapless crew about twenty minutes into it, as opposed to the hour it takes to get to the big "everything goes to shit" setpiece of the other films.

I personally am lenient on The Lost World:  Jurassic Park for being a mere monster movie, though Jurassic Park III is an even more primal one.  Should I be lenient on it too?  The difference that I can really make between the two films is that The Lost World had some semblance of a story that felt like a logical continuation of the first one.  Jurassic Park III has the bare minimum of what passes for a story and is more or less just an excuse to get back on the island.  Here's what it offers:  A young boy finds himself trapped on Isla Sorna after a parasailing accident.  Dr. Alan Grant (from the first Jurassic Park) is hoodwinked by the boy's parents into traveling to the island and rescuing him.

If one were to watch all the Jurassic Park films in a row (now five as of this writing, with the release of Jurassic World:  Fallen Kingdom), Jurassic Park III would stick out like a sore thumb.  It has nothing really to do with the politics and morality of the island's existence, which has been a huge plot thread since the original, and is just mostly a tourist trap fun house.  Look over there!  Spinosaur!  Look over that way!  Velociraptor!  Yay!  T-Rex cameo!  There's not a lot here to digest, it's just special effects.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  There's room for spectacle for the sake of spectacle in the filmmaking field.  Jurassic Park III just does it in an unspectacular way.

Joe Johnston takes the reins of the franchise away from spectacle master Steven Spielberg, and personally I wish he were given a better script to shine with.  Johnston's a director that often flies under my radar, but when I look over his filmography I'd be hard-pressed to find a movie he's made that I've genuinely disliked.  Be it nostalgic fare like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Jumanji down to the criminally underrated superhero flick Captain America:  The First Avenger (you thought I was going to say The Rocketeer, didn't you?) and even a mess like The Wolfman wins a bit of points from me in just how handsome it looks.  Jurassic Park III isn't really directed with a lot of flair or logic, but he made a competent monster flick that shows off the monsters and lets them do their thing.

Perhaps Jurassic Park III's biggest sin is that it's a little bit daffy.  I can't really hate the film, because it's just too simple minded to have any strong feelings for or against.  There are some fans out there who at the very least consider the movie a superior sequel to The Lost World, possibly because it's more to the point.  That's cool.  Maybe I just feel a sequel to Jurassic Park should have just a hint of meat on its bones.  But if I have ninety minutes to kill and just want an endless string of dinosaur scenes, Jurassic Park III is painless

The Trax

Matthew J. Elliott threatens to over-saturate his riff early on when he finds himself relying a bit too much on the Rifftrax patented gag of "This is how I reacted to insert popular show/movie here."  The first thirty minutes of Jurassic Park III have more versions of this riff than I could hear in five different Rifftraxes put together.

Fortunately Mr. Elliott is a genuine riffing talent, with a killer dry delivery and has some lines that slay me.  During the big plane crash scene he chimed in with "And on the left side you'll see my left side...SOMEBODY HELP ME!" and I just lost my shit for about three minutes.  Same with a riff halfway through with the Peter Pan inspired setpiece of a satellite phone ringing from inside the belly of a Spinosaur, to which he responds "And I can't get three bars in a light drizzle?"  That's some grade-A riffing right there.

I do feel that this immensely riffable film might have been done better justice with a group effort, but as a solo act Matthew does well.  Of course the movie is not intimidatingly bad, and so it's not hard to hold one's ground against it.  Matthew J. Elliott may not be everyone's style however, with his dry wit and high reliance on the obscure.  But I feel constantly amused by observational and self-depreciating gags like "I'm watching people in a below average movie watching people in a worse movie.  Congratulations, irony.  You win."

Good