Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Man, I can't do NOTHIN' right this week!
My apologies to the always-efficient Jed The Hutt, who sent me this review for the JPIII disc many moons ago. I have been so wrapped up in this project of ULTIMATE EVIL (BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!) that I forgot to post it.
Yeah, that's right... I forgot. I said it. I have become the Absent-Minded Professor. When you see me at Butt-Numb-A-Thon, look for the guy in the Fred McMurray sweaters. Until then, enjoy another exemplary piece by the pride and joy of Orange County...
"Trying to critically parse the Jurassic Park movies is a bit like trying to delve into the hidden subtext of Disneyland's "Country Bear Jamboree." Both entertainments provide fun, technically masterful rides, but both also tend to fall apart under scrutiny - and that scrutiny really only succeeds in ruining everybody's fun, like sniffing at a Ray Harryhausen "Sinbad" movie for having less-than-stellar acting and a formless plot. What's the damned point?"
Alexandra Dupont's review of the first two Jurassic Park films on DVD.
Tricky Bidness, Sequels. Critics can be unduly harsh toward them, and who knows what audience reaction to sequels can be. Vary too far from the source material and you've alienated fans of the original. Stick to what worked before and you're Xeroxing. In addition, the law of diminishing returns dictates that if you were to spend the same amount of money you spent on the original picture, you won't get the same Return On Investment. And that, ROI, is how there's a movie business. Sequels, then, are generally made on the cheap, with second tier actors, directors, and FX budgets. Even films that make tremendous cultural and business impact, like, oh, Jaws, are not exempt from this cost-cutting-to-make-a-buck philosophy. With that in mind, I looked at the second JP sequel with some incredulity. Frankly, I disliked the film when I saw it (for free) in theaters, and though in watching the DVD my opinion has softened slightly, it still ranks fairly low on my totem pole of quality as far as summer blockbusters are concerned. This is a shame, considering how much Jurassic Park III has to offer as a DVD. This trend of fantastic extras for movies that kind of under perform is somewhat frustrating. We better get good discs of Hedwig and Ghost World and Waking Life, but I digress.
The Movie
The first Jurassic Park film sticks out in my mind as being the first big summer tent pole film that I remember being really excited to see that I didn't like very much. Perhaps it was my burgeoning cinematic snobbery or that I'd gone in expecting to see the book accurately and completely translated. Though watchable, I've never had any great love for these movies. I'd personally kind of hoped for some violent and bloody man-on-dino combat to come from the Lost World: "well, we're in this high grass here, and we're surrounded by velociraptors, and we're all heavily armed game hunters-GO FOR THE FLASHLIGHTS". The bizarre conservationist nature of the Jurassic park films puzzles me to no end. It's not goddamned Bambi, it's a T-rex, and it's big and tough and deadly, and a rocket launcher is a worthy adversary, and at the heart of the matter it's not a REAL dinosaur-It was clearly not meant to be. Go To.
Hopes for a Rambo Bloodbath are dashed as JPIII unfolds, and Sam Neil's Dr. Allen Grant, Grim Paleontologist, is horns waggled by a desperate couple played by William H. Macy and Tea Leoni, back to Costa Rica, onto Isla Sorna, the island he didn't almost get killed on. The characters are… sad people. The sad visitation rights dad, the sad mercenaries, and the sad state of Dr. Grant, having been left by Laura Dern's character and struggling to continue studying real dinosaurs as opposed to the theme park JP dinosaurs. This can be attributed to writers Alexander Payne & Jim Thomas of Election fame, and I can't help but wonder if some of the gay subtext-lite "slash-fic" nature of the relationship between Dr. Grant and his assistant "Billy"(yes, Billy) Brennan, played by the boyishly handsome & rugged Alessandro Nivola, was intentional. It entertained me, at least, when dinosaurs weren't eating people, to watch their Batman & Robin scenes play out. For the dubious, some even doubt the situation being subtext. Chatter dmann quipped, "You mean the young guy wasn't Sam Neill's lover?" when I mentioned it. Take our collective words for it.
Speaking of Raptors, the dinosaurs are what we're here for. We finally get some form of flying dinosaur, referred to as a Pteranadon, and these guys are featured in both my favorite and least favorite shots from the film-at one point one of the flying things does this 90-degree flight thing like a hummingbird or a helicopter and it took me out of an otherwise decent scene, but there's also a great close-up of a Stan Winston Studios Puppet craning it's neck back for a menacing close-up that makes me laugh every time I watch it. Velociraptors get plenty of screen-time, with a more exotic, almost tropical look. The T-rex shows up to get bitch-slapped by the new kid on the block, the spinosaurus. With his long jaw, goofy forearms that, while not prehensile like T-rex's, manage to look sillier, and what appeared to be a lazy eye, I couldn't root for the guy. Give him a straw hat, some overalls, a banjo and a largish wheat reed, and you've got the big FX sequence for "Pogo: The Movie". While I can understand the need to bring in something new, I could have done with some T-rex retribution.
THE DVD
I've got a 35 incher or some such, he said with a snicker, and no audio system, so bear with my lo-fi system: The disc looked fine, no scenes stood out in my mind as having noticeable artifacts or compression blockage. However, there is a layer change that is particularly ill timed-it comes down right in the midst of a sentence from Mr. Macy. I point this out as not everyone has fancy shmancy DVD players that can smooth out layer changes, and it's a minor quibble, but the authors of the DVD might want to be considerate of more of the audience. The audio was great, and Don Davis' score in a 5.1 mix with all sorts of surround sound raptor honking could, I think, be spectacular, but I've got TV speakers. It still sounded fine.
THE GOODIES
My earlier ranting about sequels made on the cheap was not without a point, which is this: Jurassic Park III isn't that movie that was made for the bottom dollar. I can bitch about hokey subplots and lame endings, but the technical dedication put forth by those involved is above reproach. The DVD extras illustrate this.
We get an involved making-of featurette put together, as is much of the content on the disc, by Laurent Boreanzu, who is making a name for himself as the go-to guy for DVD features. Interviews with key players combine with BTS footage and paint a glossy but still informative look at the production, spearheaded by producer (and babe) Kathleen Kennedy. I had no idea she was a hottie. Learn Something New...
There is also a painfully short featurette on the Stan Winston Studios. Though great to see these artists at work, it's not nearly in-depth enough, one supposes, for security reasons. Such a shame, especially when the ILM documentary is so in-depth. The ability to watch the various segments at the press of one menu button would have been appreciated, but the fully navigatable documentary pours over every aspect of the CGI critters. We're also given "turntables" of all the dinosaurs in 3D-this thing is a must for FX fetishists.
Too many documentaries to list, the extras have features concerning almost every aspect of the production.
Some other highlights:
·Production Photographs: a feature generally as exciting as a sleeping dog, Universal did right, as they did with the Conan: SE, and made a snazzy presentation of production photographs, with music and everything. Somebody knows how to use PowerPoint. Problem being, the pictures are all stills seemingly culled from the movie-no BTS hijinks. Great implementation of dull materials.
·Posters-I only bring this up to encourage one and all to take a gander at the bizarre direction explored with a human embryo skeleton in place of the t-rex as several of the concept posters. Freaky Weird.
·Lively Commentary Track from Stan Winston, John Rosengrant, Michael Lanteri, & Jim Mitchell. Though these guys don't have a lot to say about the non-dinosaur parts of the film, they keep things light yet informative. Stan Winston is a natural-born commentary-track-commentator; he should really do more of them. What comes across from these guys, especially when one of them seemingly begins going through his Rolodex and thanking people during the closing credits, is that this film wasn't for them about phoning it in and getting a fat paycheck. This wasn't Jurassic Park III; this was the chance to make the dinosaurs even better than before, faster, tougher, more diverse, and more realistic. Bravo, gentlemen. I wish I could say the rest of the movie lived up to the standards you set for yourselves.
Also worth mentioning is the new disc to be included in the new boxed set for all three movies, BEYOND Jurassic Park. This appears to be a collection of extra features that were deleted from the original releases; owners of the first two movies on disc will be able to get BJP for free when they purchase JPIII on DVD, to over-abbreviate. Running the Gamut between filler and fascinating content, Beyond Jurassic Park goes from Fascinating (a lengthy featurette on the sound mix and score of JPIII, more go-motion animatics from the first movie, this time of the first T-rex scene) to Mundane (an extremely LONG screen-to-screen comparison of untouched footage from The Lost World with the final product) to Quirky (a thank-you note to Steven Spielberg from ILM featuring a kick line of Compys) to Crass Commercialism (a video ride-along on Universal Theme Park's Jurassic Park ride. I don't know how, but they managed to make the experience yet duller than the ride itself, which is quite a feat-have they EVER got that thing running properly?)
It is going to be an exceedingly long time before I can close my eyes and not here the "Kirby Paint + Tile Plus In Westgate" jingle. Pray for my soul.
--jed
