JURASSIC PARK III

It just wouldn’t be a Jurassic Park sequel without some stars sticking their arms up to the elbows in dinosaur poop. That’s the culmination of one of the best gags in Joe Johnston’s III, an ongoing sequence involving a cell phone that alludes to the crocodile in Peter Pan (another funny moment features, inevitably, Barney). For the most part, though, Park remains true to its name, taking us through the requisite thrill rides. Bereft parents Paul (William H. Macy) and Amanda Kirby (Téa Leoni) hoodwink paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) into accompanying them and some disreputable mercenaries in order to save their overly adventurous 14-year-old son Eric (Trevor Morgan) from Isla Sorna, where we last saw the genetically cloned saurians. In short order we have the spinosaurus (bigger, meaner, dumber than the T-Rex, with a classy Caddie trying to extricate victims from a vehicle like the last Gummi Bears from a box; we have the tense raptor confrontation (“Oh my God!” uttered for not the last time); we have the terrifying adventures in the Pteranodon cage. Johnston doesn’t waste much time building character or suspense between rides, though he makes a few mordant, if hypocritical, asides along the way about pop culture and cheap thrills. Only when he tries to summon up some conviction for platitudes about family values, self-reliance, and forgiveness does he remind us how far we’ve evolved from genuine cinema.

— Peter Keough