Téa Leoni is at her best when a script lets her be fast, sharp and slightly ridiculous: a screwball actor who arrived after screwball had gone. When a film wants a woman to worry and shriek, as Jurassic Park III does, it wastes her.
Fi1m perspective
Téa Leoni runs a notch faster than everyone else in the frame. She talks quickly, she is not above a pratfall, and she is usually the one person on screen who has noticed that the situation is absurd. Her stock character is the witty, high-strung woman set against a calmer man, and the films that suit her let him be the straight one while she does the falling over.
The career has two halves. Small parts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Santa Barbara and A League of Their Own among them, led to the female lead in Bad Boys (1995), which put her in studio pictures, and she stayed there for a decade: Deep Impact (1998), The Family Man (2000) opposite Nicolas Cage, Jurassic Park III (2001), Spanglish (2004) for James L. Brooks, Fun with Dick and Jane (2005) with Jim Carrey. Then television, and Elizabeth McCord in Madam Secretary from 2014 to 2019, a political drama built around her. Her reputation for acid wit and physical comedy rests mostly on the earlier comedies, Flirting with Disaster (1996) in particular. We have not reviewed them, so take that as report rather than verdict.
What we have reviewed is Jurassic Park III, and it is the wrong use of her. Amanda Kirby is a mother on an island full of things that eat people, and the script, by Peter Buchman, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, gives her a shout, an apology for the shout, and a telling-off for screaming at the wrong moment. She and William H. Macy are two capable actors handed a squabble. Sam Neill gets the weariness and the weight; Leoni gets the volume. We felt for the actor more than for the character, which is not what the film intended, and we spent her scenes waiting for the joke she is so plainly built to deliver and was not allowed to.
She has said of her approach, "Imagination, that's my 'method'", and you can see her applying it there, working up a mother's fear for a film that mostly needs her to point at the dinosaur. It is honest effort in a part written for other people to react to. Nothing about it is lazy; nothing about it is hers.
If Jurassic Park III is where you first meet her, do not judge her by it. The Leoni worth seeking out is the one who is quick, irreverent and slightly out of control, and who is trusted to fall over for a laugh. Nobody in Jurassic Park III falls over for a laugh.
Biography
Téa Leoni is an American actress. Born Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni on 25 February 1966 in New York City, she began her career with small roles in films such as Switch (1991) and A League of Their Own (1992).
She gained wider recognition for her performance opposite Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys (1995). Subsequent leading roles include Deep Impact (1998), The Family Man (2000), Jurassic Park III (2001) as Amanda Kirby, Spanglish (2004) and Fun with Dick and Jane (2005). From 2014 to 2019 she starred as Elizabeth McCord in the television series Madam Secretary.
