The obvious question is: why another? The original Jurassic Park was great all-round family entertainment, featuring groundbreaking special effects and a fair share of jump-out-of-your-seat moments.

The follow up, The Lost World: Jurassic Park II, had a couple of eye-opening set-pieces but proved to be little more than an outright disappointment. Yet four years later, the dead dinosaur has been deemed ripe for another flogging in the name of finance.

The only major player returning for the third installment is Sam Neill, who reprises his role as paleontologist Dr Alan Grant from the 1993 original. Alongside him are new additions Alessandro Nivola, Tea Leoni and William H Macy relatively cheap and unknown actors, who were clearly brought in to balance the booming special effects budget.

Leoni and Macy play Paul and Amanda Kirby, a divorced couple who persuade Neill to give them an aerial tour of the dinosaur's home island, Isla Sorna. Initially reluctant, Grant agrees on the basis of a big cheque and fresh research opportunity on his favoured beast, the Velociraptor.

What he doesn't realise is that after a disastrous plane crash, he will be conducting his research face-to-face with his reptilian foe. Not only that, but new, improved prehistoric predators the almighty Spinosaurus and the winged Pteradons also have Grant on the menu.

And if all that wasn't enough he also has to put up with the shrieking stupidity of Leoni, the naivety of Macy and help the clueless couple out with a surprise rescue mission for their son, who has gone missing on the island. No wonder Neill looks so weary throughout. He's not the only one.

For Jurassic Park III misses the magic touch of a Michael Crichton, or Steven Spielberg (here only as executive producer) to give it any kind of interest. Drafted-in director Joe Johnston (Honey, I Shrunk The Kids) is happy to just serve up the standard shocks, surprises and dino-battles in unimaginative fashion, topped off with an anti-climactic final reel that proves to be the dampest of squibs.

Even worse, it suggests that a fourth visit to the park is a very real possibility.