Patient: Jurassic Park III
Profile: Latest installment of the mega-franchise once again pits dull-witted, strange-sounding, genetically engineered creatures against dinosaurs. Think Jurassic Park meets The Clones meets The Lost World meets The Stupids.Symptoms: Look, I can't heal anyone who doesn't want to get better. It's obvious the people who put these pageants together aren't interested in developing better characters or stories or even special effects—several times, it was obvious scenes were being shot against a screen; other times, the jungle and dinos looked about as authentic as something Land of the Lost would have done if it had had a budget. If they did care, they wouldn't keep hiring actors to say things like, “You're still the best. I mean that.” (Laura Dern) or “Meet the future of paleontology!” (some good-looking guy) or “This isn't how you make dinosaurs. No. This is how you play God!” (Sam Neill) or “AWWWWW!!!!!” (Tea Leoni every three minutes) or “Did you hear that?” any time any 50-foot, 100-ton dino tries to sneak up on them. “Hear what? Oh, you mean that noise that sounds like Madison Square Garden humping the Pentagon? Yeah, I think I caught that.” Diagnosis: AWWWWW!!!!! Did you hear that?
Prescription:I respect a patient who has not only come to accept but also own his malady—with an $81 million opening, the doctor only wishes he could have gotten in on the ground floor of this disease. My only recommendation is that they go all the way with this. No one goes to these movies to see lame stories about lame people; they just want the dinos. The people behind Jurassic Park III seem to realize this on some level since in each episode, they come up with new ones—in this case, the dinos can fly and talk to one another. So why not just scuttle the humans altogether and have an all-dino cast? You can have the wisecracking, streetwise dinosaur (Murphyosaurus); the flamboyant yet soft-hearted gay dinosaur (Fiersteinychus); or the good-looking romantic lead dinosaur who lives with sordid rumors about his private life (Gerbilophus and Murphyosaurus, who apparently is into picking up Transvestidons).
