The cellphone has changed our perception of space and distance and has altered our traditional understanding of the public and the private. It has also, since the mid-Nineties, become an indispensable plot device in movies. Early examples are the killer in Scream stalking his victim using a cellphone and George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer brought together in One Fine Day when they accidentally pick up each other’s phones.
In Jurassic Park III, another disparate party is stranded on a Pacific island taken over by cloned prehistoric monsters, one of which has swallowed a cellphone along with its hapless operator. So, like the crocodile that swallowed an alarm clock in Peter Pan, this T Rex reveals his imminent approach through the phone’s bleeping.
Directed with anonymous efficiency by Joe Johnston, a celebrated special-effects expert for George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and director of the delightful, low-budget Rocket Boys, Jurassic Park III is not at all bad.
Richard Attenborough is no longer around, but Sam Neill’s decent Dr Grant, absent from the sequel, is back to lead a rescue expedition to find the lost son of a business tycoon (William H Macy) and his ex-wife (Téa Leoni). Along for the ride is some obvious dinosaur fodder, and as Johnston has dispensed almost entirely with lyrical wonder and concentrated on horror and violence, the result is a dark, almost morbid picture that is unsuitable for younger children and squeamish adults.
In fact the experience of Jurassic Park, we learn, has left Dr Grant with dinosaur nightmares. The creatures are more realistic and ferocious than ever, especially the pterodactyls.
The film’s final score, by my estimation, is Jurassic Park 3, Visitors 2.