IT WILL play to packed houses, but on the evidence of this film, the Jurassic Park franchise has clearly run out of steam.

Bereft of story, even the computer animation that dazzled us in the first film now looks over-familiar and the whole thing has an air of creaking predictability.

The central problem is that the story - a small band of people are thrown into direct contact with dinosaurs on an isolated island - is basically the same as the first film, but with no real attempt to address the moral issues at stake.

Palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant (Sam Neill, back again after missing the first JP sequel) and his assistant Billy (Alessandro Nivola) agree to act as guides to wealthy adventurer Paul Kirby (William H Macy) and his wife Amanda (Ta Leoni) who want to visit Isla Sorna, the incubation island set up to stock the original Jurassic Park island.

Obviously things don't go to plan.

Their plane crash-lands and Grant discovers the Kirbys' real reason for going to the island, but at least he gets the opportunity to test at close hand his new theory that velociraptors had communication skills and a level of intelligence far above that of other dinosaurs.

Having whittled the band of humans down to the film's main stars, there follows a series of well-staged if not entirely satisfying set pieces - inter-dinosaur fights, narrow escapes and sticky ends - linked by... well, precious little actually.

Director Joe Johnston seems to have paid so much attention to getting the dinosaurs right (and, largely, succeeded) that he has forgotten about the humans. Every time Grant worries out loud about the ethics of dinosaur cloning, we get a great big close up of Sam Neill just to ram the point home. Ta Leoni looks like she is permanently about to wet herself and Macy's talents are shamefully wasted playing the one character who undergoes some kind of emotional journey in the film.

The laws of natural selection are seldom exercised more savagely than in the film industry, but as they are based on financial returns and not artistic, the success of this 'threequel' should ensure Jurassic Park is not in danger of extinction. Yet.

NICK CHURCHILL