2 Stars (out of four)
So, the big boys are finally back. After 12 years and at least one more Godzilla film and Pacific Rim, the dinos are here! And spectacularly so. Don't let the 2 stars fool you. That reflects how good the film is. It is spectacularly bad which I'll explain later. But grand spectacle entertainment? It's got that in spades, and unfortunately, they will continue to make crapfests like this judging from the incredible box office this film generated in its opening weekend.
The story opens with Jurassic Par...uh...World finally open for business. Like the last three installments, they make a bigger dinosaur that will threaten everybody when it goes haywire, blah...blah...blah. Do you really need a summary? It's the same damn film as the last three with interchangeable stars, cardboard bad guys, and a plodding story that is beginning to look like a slasher film. We already know by the first fifteen minutes who will live and die and we just wait for it to happen.
So, let's start with what's good. It is a lot of fun to watch. The dinos are big(ger than ever), they are fun to watch, and Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt are very easy on the eyes. The movie, for me, has one very redeeming factor. It sort of centers on two young brothers whose parents are getting a divorce. The younger feels it acutely, the older, high schooler, tries to ignore it. But, due to the circumstances they get thrust into, the older one begins to take on the responsibility of his younger brother and they grow much closer as a result. Similar to Frozen, I liked this focus on the bond of siblings and how they help each other through stressful times. This plot line, at the very least, keeps the film from descending into Sharknado stupidity.
Okay, that said, let's tackle the crapstorm this film is (cracking knuckles). I hate to sound like a bloodthirsty psycho, but these films get tamer and tamer. PG-13 used to be an indicator that a film was a tad too intense for young viewers, but has now basically become shorthand for "watering down a perfectly good R-rated film to get more people in the theater." Jurassic World is no exception. While it is pretty intense in some scenes, it does not hold a candle to the intensity of the original, or even the other two. Probably because the director was much better and the writer actually had an original idea to explore. The dinosaurs are large, eating machines, and that fact is not covered up in those earlier installments. When people died, it was gruesome and bloody, lending their deaths some gravitas. In this film, very few people actually die, and those that do are offscreen or done to make the audience cheer. Now, I know some of you are reading this and saying, but what about the kids? That will traumatized them! What kind of monster are you to advocate bloody deaths in a kid's film?!? And to those people, I will say, what kind of horrible parent takes their kids to see this, or any of the other Jurassic movies. They are not, repeat NOT, children's films. I would ask, do you even remember what the first one was like? That would give kids nightmares for years. Just because there are dinosaurs in it does not make it for kids. The first two were about the philosophical underpinnings and unintended consequences of messing with nature. The dinosaurs are incidental, merely the plot device to find the answers to those questions interesting.
Next, we never really get to see the Indomitus Rex fully. While they tried to recreate the slow reveal of both the T. Rex and Raptors in the first movie, Colin Treverrow is just not up to the task of Spielberg or even Joe Johnston. He is competent as a director, don't misunderstand. He can visually tell a story fairly well, but he is not a major leaguer like Spielberg. In fact, he has done only four movies before this: two smallish features, a TV movie and a short. It may not have been the best idea to turn the reins of a billion dollar franchise to a rookie. He mostly just rips off sequences from other, better directors. There is a particularly egregious, almost shot-for-shot recreation of Cameron's Aliens. But as the box office will show, never underestimate the audience's stupidity and continue to insult their intelligence by continuing to make this crap. It would have been nice to see our main dino a little more.
Now I don't want to rest blame solely on the director. It's a lazy and hackneyed story, which the director did have a hand in. The 5+ screenwriters miss the central issue of storytelling: that you need to ground a story, particularly a science fiction story, in good characters, not make them fodder for the next bite, or more insultingly, play their deaths for laughs or cheers. It helps us relate to the otherworldly events happening around us. There has to be motivations, sympathies, powerful emotions to propel the story onward and peril to our heroes to keep us engaged. What was important in the first two movies was the philosophy and interplay of the characters behind it. There were no evil bad guys; merely misguided optimism that spirals out of control, anchored by the Alan Grant/kids subplot. The characters had arcs, they learned and grew. That is why, as the franchise moves on and it becomes less about people and more about the dinos, it's quality steadily declines. Why should we care about the people? They no longer really matter. The movie no longer has emotional punch, just empty thrills. And while they are undoubtedly fun, the movies are no longer satisfying on any tangible level. They are disposable entertainment, to be watched and forgotten just as quickly. That is what separates a great movie like Jurassic Park, that will takes its place in movie history as compared to Jurassic Park Iii. Quick, can you tell me who starred in it and what it's about?
You can tell the movies have been going off the rails for awhile now because there are fewer and fewer threats. In all three previous movies, the raptors and T. Rex were forces of nature to contend with. But like Godzilla over the years, they are becoming "the good guys." Where they were once something to be feared and avoided, they are both used as weapons against the bigger threat in Jurassic World. Once the threat is done, they saunter off into the sunset. This doesn't make a lot of sense in the film considering the 22,000 park attendees are snacks on a stick sitting in one place and the dinos inconceivably (conveniently?) ignore them. The bad guy is dead, nothing more to see here. And on that note, scores of pterodons that were released earlier magically disappear when we no longer need them. And in one of the worst deus ex machina moments since Deep Blue Sea, the Indomitus Rex is ignominiously killed in a very abrupt (and stupid) manner.
So, all in all, the movie is lazy, sophomoric and insulting to anyone over the age of twelve. You can tell Hollywood is getting arrogant in what they are serving. This goes way beyond the crass commercialism that was the abysmal Lego Movie. This movie was on autopilot, with execs content that people will watch any old crap as long as it's bigger. This is not exactly new, but listen to how execs explained how they cast Chris Pratt. They say they cast him because of his great turn in Guardians of the Galaxy and that he was the voice of Emmet in The Lego Movie. Ask yourself, have you ever said to yourself, "I REALLY need to see that next movie now. The guy who voiced Dilbert is in it!" No, he is just the hot, new property of the hour. I like Pratt, and he's fine in the film. I resent Hollywood execs trying to justify his existence over any other attractive male actor. Ask yourself when you see it (you know you will despite this bad review), would the movie be any different if they cast Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey or even Brad Pitt in the role? Of course not. This is just another cynical money grab from the studios. The movie was supposed to have been originally directed by Spielberg and the whole original cast was supposed to return in one way or another. I really would have liked to have seen that one instead.
