Reception
Jurassic Park III has received mixed reviews from critics. It currently holds a 50% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 157 reviews. The general consensus stated that "The dinos are as cool as ever, but there's too much of a 'been there, done that' feel." Worse yet, it holds a 29% rating among the website's "Top Critics". It also has a 42% on Metacritic. On both sites, it is the lowest rated film out of the Jurassic Park trilogy.
Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman, who praised both the previous Jurassic Park films, awarded the third film with only a C grade, writing "Jurassic Park III has no pretentions to be anything more than a goose-bumpy fantasy theme-park ride for kids, but it's such a routine ride. Spielberg's wizardry is gone, and his balletic light touch as well, and that gives too much of this 90-minute movie over to the duller-than-dull characters." Derek Elley of Variety Reviews felt likewise, calling the film "an all-action, helter-skelter, don't-forget-to-buy-the-computer-game ride that makes the two previous installments look like models of classic filmmaking" Ben Varkontine, however, called it "not as good a ride as the first", but "better than the second." Much of the criticism was leveled at the plot as simply a chase movie with no character development; Apollo Movie Guide panned the film as being "almost the same as the first movie" with "no need for new ideas or even a script". Empire magazine gave the film 3 stars out of 5, commenting that it was "Short, scrappy and intermittently scary" and that the film ultimately "skews young". There were also complaints about its short length and small cast.
On Ebert and Roeper, Richard Roeper gave it Thumbs Down while Roger Ebert awarded a Thumbs Up. In a subsequent review, Ebert called it "the best blockbuster of the Summer".
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