When I saw the first Jurassic Park, I thought it was terrible. I thought it had a dumb story, I thought it had bad science, and most importantly, I thought it featured Jeff Goldblum.

When I saw Jurassic Park II, I thought it was worse than the first one. A dumber story, no science, and it STARRED Jeff Goldblum.

I don't know what made me think that Jurassic Park III wouldn't suck. I mean, I didn't think it was going to be a thought provoking masterpiece of the caliber of Dr. Dolittle 2 or anything, but for some reason there was this nagging little voice in the back of my head going "Yeah, this one is going to be a fun ride."

Unfortunately, not even not featuring Jeff Goldblum could save Jurassic Park III. It's terrible. It's terrible with a capital AAAAARRRRRGGGHH!

I would try to describe the plot here, but it's fairly safe to say that Jurassic Park III has no plot. The script is so simple it seems like something that a motion simulator ride rejected. This movie had so much "run and scream" in it that it makes The Texas Chainsaw Massacre look like Driving Miss Daisy.

But you're not going to see this movie because you expect it to be entertaining or, you know, make some kind of sense. You just want to see the damn dinosaurs. "How were the dinosaurs?" you ask. They were amazing. Of course they were amazing. They have to be. If this movie didn't at least dazzle critics with some kick ass dinosaurs, it wouldn't make it out of its opening weekend alive. Just as Rex Reed is picking up his pen to write "I've seen more entertaining storylines in a Nescafe commercial," he's suddenly blindsided by a flock of stunningly realistic raptors that make him write "Jurassic Park III is a visual effects feast for your eyes! The best film since Scary Movie II!"

The star dinosaur of this one is called the Spinosaurus Ex Mortis, or something to that effect. It's this gigantic, T-Rex dwarfing, articulated arm having... basically it's Mathew Broderick's Godzilla with a pointier face. Never having heard of a Spinosaurus before the JP3 hoopla started up, I actually looked it up to see if it was real, or if it was just made up for the movie. As it turns out, Spinosaurus is a mostly theoretical beast, based on, like, three bone fragments that scientists have found. He's the equivalent to finding a hubcap and a floor mat in your backyard, and theorizing what a 1973 Oldsmobile looked like.

The movie starts just off the restricted island of Isla Sorna. We know it's the restricted island of Isla Sorna because the screen says "Isla Sorna - RESTRICTED" right on it. A couple of assholes that we don't care about are taking the kid from The Sixth Sense who didn't see dead people parasailing off the coast of Jurassic Park, or more accurately, the coast of Jurassic Park II.

At least they were returning to "Site B" in this movie. I was expecting them to be like:

"What is this island with dinosaurs? It's not Jurassic Park or Jurassic Park II: Site B!"

"There's something I didn't tell you... there's a site C."

As you might imagine, things go awry, and the kid suddenly becomes the kid who sees dead people, as all of the assholes are killed by dinosaurs of some sort, conveniently off screen, and without spilling any blood or wrecking any part of the boat except for its canvas top. Don't get antsy, Mr. and Mrs. Audiencepants. You're not gonna get to see a dinosaur THIS early in the movie. You've gotta EARN them.

Meanwhile, Dr. Alan Grant is playing with the son that he's made with Dr. Sattler since they were in the first movie together. NO! Regardless of what the first movie led us to believe, the good doctors never boinked like wild pachycephalosauruses. That's kind of refreshing in a "Anthony Michael Hall didn't get Molly Ringwald at the end of The Breakfast Club" kind of way. The concept that sometimes people don't hook up with who they're supposed to at the end of the movie always kind of makes you feel good.

Anyway, Ellie has apparently given up on Paleontology and respectable haircuts, and has gone and married some guy in the STATE DEPARTMENT of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. This is a fact that they brush over rather quickly in one line of dialogue, because it's certainly not important later. Anyway, it's nice to see that crotchety old Dr. Grant hasn't gone back on an opinion that I always admired, which states, "kids smell."

It's also good to see that Jeff Goldblum didn't marry her either, if for no reason other than it helps prevent him from being in this movie.

From here we go to Dr. Grant's big press conference, where it is confirmed that he didn't spend the time since his last JP movie becoming interesting.

Grant: And so, in conclusion, I looked at some raptor skulls and I think that they could talk to each other. What they would say is a mystery, since they are all good and dead, and not alive anymore. Now please give me some money. Are there any questions?

(Crowd of extras feigns interest by raising their hands.)

Grant: Are there any questions that are not about Jurassic Park?

(Half the hands go down.)

Grant: Are there any questions that are not about Jurassic Park II, which I didn't actually appear in?

(The rest of the hands go down but one.)

Some Guy: Far be it from me to say the only goddamn rational thing in this movie, but since there are, in fact, dinosaurs on Jurassic Park, why don't you just go and look at them, you giant retard?

Grant: I don't like those dinosaurs. They're icky.

Some Girl: Dr. Grant, do you have a meaningless cliche that you can say for us to use in the trailer?

Dr. Grant: Why yes, yes I do. (clears throat) "No force on Earth or in Heaven could get me back on that island."

Meanwhile, back at Dr. Grant's ever present dig site, his sidekick Billy Beefcake is teaching an empty headed girl Paleontologist all about dinosaur bone excavation.

Girl: It's like, okay, I'm like, trying to dig up these bones, and stuff, but it's like really HARD! You know? Like, how do I DO this?

Beefcake: Actually, you just need to use a toothbrush. See how that brushes the loose dust off of this impossibly complete raptor skeleton that the prop guys built?

Girl: Like, wow! You are sooooo dreamy! I can't even tell, like, what's bone and what's rock, you know?

Beefcake: See the parts that are shaped like a dinosaur? Those are the bones. You did go to some kind of school before we hired you, didn't you?

It's hard to express in words how dumb everybody in this movie is. And I don't mean dumb like "Oh yeah, just run up the stairs when Michael Myers is chasing you with a knife" kind of dumb. I mean dumb like "Why didn't somebody TELL ME that I wasn't supposed to shove this beehive into my anus?!" kind of dumb.

Anyway, then we meet the Shoveler and his wife, Mrs. Duchovny. They appear at the dinosaur excavation and offer Dr. Grant enough money to fund his dig if he'll come to Jurassic Park with them. And he AGREES!

Ha ha ha! He ALWAYS FALLS for that one! Hoo hoo! What a loser! I'll bet when he was little he always had bruises on his forehead from the bigger kids constantly going "What's that on your shirt?" *WHAP!*

So it's off to Jurassic Park III for a fun filled rest of the movie of running and screaming. As if I haven't said enough already, I guess I'll take this into the Spoiler Lounge from here on out.

To make a long story short, this movie was more terrible than were the terrible lizards themselves. If you really need to see dinosaurs so damn badly that you are even considering seeing this movie, do yourself a favor and just get Theodore Rex or The Land Before Time VII, you self-destructive psycho. Both of those films include healthy doses of dinosaurs, and no Jeff Goldblum.

So off they all go to Jurassic Park II. Dr. Grant, the Shoveler and Mrs. Duchovny, Billy Beefcake, and three expendable mercenaries who apparently didn't actually bring any of the guns that they had been pictured testing on small aircraft.

Dr. Grant: And off to the right side of the plane here, you can see some... dinosaurs...

Mrs. Duchovny: ERRRRIIIIIIIIIIC!

Dr. Grant: Er... yes, and over on the left side there's some... more dinosaurs...

Shoveler: ERRIIIIIIIIIIC!

Dr. Grant: Why do they keep doing that?

Expendable Guy 1: Oh, didn't we mention, we're gonna land and look for the Shoveler's almost certainly dead son.

Dr. Grant: No, nobody told me that. Please excuse me while I freak out Event Horizon style. EEEEEK! EEEEEK! We can't land! We'll all die!

Expendable Guy 2: Well, I guess now I'll whack you in the head so you'll shut the hell up until we've landed.

Audience: Neat! Thanks! Could you do Mrs. Duchovny next?

So they land and, get this, see a giant scary dinosaur! Of course, we the audience don't get to see it. That would be expensive. Basically the show we get is a bunch of meat puppets who we don't care about getting out of an airplane, a bunch of rustling leaves, and then a bunch of meat puppets getting into an airplane.

Expendable Guy 2: Wait, we can't leave! We forgot Expendable Guy 1!

Expendable Guy 3: He'll be okay. He'll live. Unless I run into him with this airplane.

Expendable Guy 1: Please don't run into me with that airplane. I'm your bestest friend! Getting hit by an airplane is a stupid way to die on Jurassic Park II!

(Spinosaurus bursts out of the brush and devours Expendable Guy 1 in an unsatisfying collection of quick camera cuts before the airplane slams into its freakin' back.)

Expendable Guy 3: Ahhh! We crash now!

And so they do. The plane, a propeller plane, mind you, crashes through the Spinosaurus, throwing its blood across the windshield, without so much as making a visible scratch on him. That bad mofo just keeps coming at them like it didn't even notice. Wheee.

And what does it do when it catches up with the wreckage of their plane? It crushes it into the soft, muddy ground, more or less shot-for-shot exactly like the T-Rex did to Timmy in the Explorer in the first movie. Yawn. Oh I get it, the scale is larger. A bigger dinosaur with a bigger vehicle. Wow. This is spellbinding film making.

But then, as if to temporarily divert the flow of people rushing to the box office to get their money back, they put in the only really cool sequence in the whole movie. It's short, but it's sweet.

As if having a plane crash into it without so much as batting an eyelid wasn't enough to prove that the Spinosaurus was one bad mother, they then have it battle and promptly kill a T-Rex. It's the old "He used to be unstoppable, check out how I stop him" bit.

It's like when Species 8472 killed a million previously unstoppable Borg with a sneeze in that episode of Voyager. Now people can go back and watch Jurassic Park and go "What are you pussys so afraid of? It's only a little T-Rex for cryin' out loud. It's not like it's a Spinosaurus or anything."

I also like the brief product placement of the never-before-or-after-seen Carnotaur. Hey kids! Look! It's a Carnotaur! As seen in Disney's Dinosaur! Lame.

And the raptors in this movie could kick the raptors from the first movie's ass too. It seems that the main driving force in raptor evolution is the crackpot theories of Dr. Grant. In the first movie he explains how they trick their prey into watching one of them while another attacks, and they do. He makes some crack about them opening doors, and they do. In this movie, he thinks that they can talk to each other, and they do.

So basically raptors can't do anything that Dr. Grant doesn't think they can. If only he would put more of his energy into thinking that raptors could bake chocolate cake and make balloon animals, he could single handedly neutralize their threat.

That is, except for the mobster raptors. The hell? What was up with that one that "set a trap," and then upon realizing that it didn't work, just reached out and snapped Expendable Guy 3's neck like he's Guido the Jackknife or something? Remember when raptors used to just claw and bite? Now they'll break your kneecaps with an aluminum bat if your gambling debts come in late.

Anyway, for the rest of the movie, it's pretty much a cycle between run from the Spinosaurus, run from the raptors, engage in group therapy. Really. When the tension gets too high, it's always nice to have a little family chat that has nothing to do with the movie to cool things down a little.

Shoveler: Remember that time that we went fishing? I tried to put the boat in the water, but the trailer sank, and then some guy wanted to kick my ass?

Mrs. Duchovny: Yeah, I remember that. Why do you bring it up?

Shoveler: I like fishing.

Dr. Grant: Okay, that's enough of that. It's time to be chased by the Spinosaurus again.

And then comes the worst ending of any Jurassic Park movie yet.

Jurassic Park - Just when the human snacks are about to be done in by a fierce raptor, the T-Rex comes out of nowhere to save the day. Yay! At the time I thought it was dumb that this ripple-making, five ton beast could sneak up and into the building without anybody noticing, but in retrospect, knowing things to come, it wasn't bad.

Jurassic Park II - The T-Rex, back when he used to be a bad ass, ends up terrorizing San Diego. Even though it makes no sense, and is a radical and unnecessary departure from the book, you've gotta admit, it's pretty freakin' cool.

Jurassic Park III - After failing to eat a single damn person who wasn't an expendable soldier for hire, the Spinosaurus is spooked by a flare gun and runs away while Dr. Grant makes a phone call to his old girlfriend. What seems like it's probably about five hours later, the non-expendables are saved from the raptors by two United States Navy Battlecruisers, a fleet of Sea-Tank things, and a platoon of soldiers.

I was out of the theater for a half hour before I remembered that they had mentioned that Ellie's husband worked at the State Department. They didn't establish that fact as much as they did, say, the fact that Billy Beefcake had a "lucky strap," which didn't actually prove itself lucky at any time in the film.

Of COURSE Ellie could get two Battlecruisers full of men, equipment, and helicopters to Costa Rica in a few hours, her husband works at the State Department.

Whatever.

The President himself can't mobilize troops like that. If he could, why would he always be sending Snake Plissken to find his kidnapped daughters?

And speaking of Billy Beefcake: In the screenplay that my increasingly suspicious contact inside of Universal delivered me some months ago, Billy dies at the end. That's right. The Pteronodons feed him to their babies, and he dies like crazy. Dies dead. Wouldn't that have been a much better ending than "I saved your hat?"

While I'm at it, that old script ended with Dr. Grant using his magic nose whistle to tell the raptors that the Spinosaurus stole their eggs, causing them to attack it while the people fled to safety. A safety not involving the U.S. Navy. Wouldn't THAT have been a better ending?

I mean, it's not uncommon for me to propose what I think would have been a better ending to a movie at the end of my review, but up until now it's always been an ending that I made up. This is the first time that I've suggested a superior alternate ending that the studio has actually seen and rejected. I don't get it. Did they want us to hate this movie? Did they think that we're not interested in cool dinosaur fights? Did the budget just work out so that they couldn't afford another CG dino battle, but they could afford some Viewpoint models of Navy ships?

And to think that I used to think Jurassic Park II was unwatchable. I'm gonna have to start sniffing touch up paint now if I'm gonna be able to sit through all of Jurassic Park IV next summer.