Jurassic Park III (UK)

Jurassic Park has become one of the biggest set of films in recent years. This continues with Jurassic Park III and its fair to say it is still a good film. Dr Alan Grant gos to site B to help look for a little boy lost while on holiday there. However he is not told this and his tricked by the so called hosts. Within minutes of landing on the island all hell breaks loose (as expected) and half the team is killed off. Leaving Dr Alan Grant and the remaining people to get off the island. As you expected it is light on plot and really preditable.
The video is good and very clean as I expect thanks to the anamorphic transfer. Sound is also very good and a DTS and 5.1 transfer are on hand. Sound is really clear and the bass is used to good effect for the deep dinosor sounds.
Extras are also quite good, a commentry track is included which features the special effects team. Stand Winston is also present. He is the best of the lot and really explains how a lot of the stuff was done. Other stuff includes a making off which is quite good, although the amount of new material must have been very little because of the making offs in the other 2 films. However it is still rather good but left me wanting a bit more. A visit to ILM features more on the technical side of the film and is also quite interesting. There is also a an extra called Montana: Finding new dinosors which looks at the real side of dinosor hunting. This is the main stuff. There are also trailers, computer generated dinos to look at and story boards. Not bad in all.
Overall I quite enjoyed Jurassic Park III. As long as you don`t go into expected to much it is quite enjoyable and fast paced. Okay the plot is very poor and the lines for the characters are nothing new or fantasic but it does the job. The action however is very good and I did find the film quite exciting. However I also felt it was a tad short and could have maybe have done with another half hour. But anyway. An enjoyable film which is quite exciting. Its a great film if you have a few mates round and want something to watch. The extras are also quite good as well.

Jurassic Park 3`s visual effects are on the whole very good, the dinosaurs and the forest where most of the action takes place looks great. However, at the begining of the film where they`re struggling to unhook themselves from the boat before it crashes into rocks looks terrible. You can quite clearly see they used a blue background, for a film that uses some great cg for dinosaurs and other bits and bobs it`s suprising they didnt work on the boat scene more to make it more convincing. This doesn`t take anything away from the Jurassic Park 3 and thank goodness for that as Jurassic Park 3 is over all to quick, I mean one minute they`re surrounded by dinosaurs and the next they`re being rescued, what an over the top rescue it was to, were these people really that important?

I usually like listening to the extra directors commentry on DVD`s and although there were a few insights into the film by the commentry, for the most part it was "that`s cg" "that`s animatronics" "that`s us" etc Also the front end menu looks a bit basic as is the navigation, surely they could have added some animated dinosaurs stomping around instead of the very static pic with a few ripples in the water.

I would have liked to have seen a few more humans on the dino dinner menu and another 20-30 mins added to the movie.

Content: Jurassic Park 3 is an excellent movie, that easily excels the Lost World but can`t quite beat the original. It has more action, less `dithering about`, that the Lost World had a lot of and was generally more exciting. I was particularly pleased to see a pteranodon flying sequence near the end of the movie, which set it apart from the other two for me. It is however a little cheesier than the first two, and some people may find the endless `running away from dinosaurs` annoying.

Video: For a DVD that contains so many extras, the quality was very good. The print looks in perfect condition, and I didn`t see a single speck anywhere. The overall look is extremely sharp, with quite a `light` look (similar to that of the two American Pie movies) and flesh tones are perfect. My only complaint would be that there are a few instances where there is some compression pixel break up, and some of the early mist shots in the flying sequence showed these somewhat clearly. The opening sequence also looks a little poor, with quite a lot of grain and some obvious `blue screen` shots. Overall, an impressive transfer that if it had been given its own disc, could have looked perfect.

Audio: The 5.1 soundtrack on this DVD is superb. The action scenes really came alive, as well as some of the intricate bits, such as the `compys` running past the water truck.
There is also an audio commentary by the effecrs team which I found very interesting. They spend a lot of time saying what`s CGI and what`s live action, but also talk about other aspects. An entertaining track.

Extras: There are quite a few extras on this disc, and I was very happy with them. `The Making of Jurassic Park 3` was a nice and informative look at various aspects of production, whereas `A Visit to ILM` was an in-depth look at the special effects, and they went into minute detail. There were a few other short documentaries, too many to list here, as well as trailers for all three Jurassic Movies.

Overall: I would have been happier if this movie was released as two discs, given the amount of extras and DTS track included, but it is still an excellent movie with an excellent transfer.

Jurassic Park III isn`t a really good movie. The storylines are terrible and the previous two movies were twice as good as this one.