I initially thought that making another Jurassic Park film was an exercise in superfluous redundancy. Well, I still kind of think that, but as one of the summer’s surprises, Jurassic World is actually pretty entertaining. Not that the film offers any surprises, mind you. There are no “didn’t see that coming” moments in the film itself. It does precisely what you think it’s going to do, really. I mean, let’s face it; if you guessed that dinosaurs were going to get loose and attack people, you’d be spot on.
But in order to shake things up a bit, it’s years later and the new park is called Jurassic World, and though the park is doing well, they need to renew interest. So order to keep the attendance high, the park owners set their team of eager scientists to genetically engineering bigger, more scary dinos. which, of course, they do well. Enter the Indominus Rex, a carnivore larger and smarter than the T Rex. That should add some “wow” factor to an already efficient killing machine, right? Because when I’m thinking, “Hey, how can I make this 40 foot long, nearly 20 foot tall, flesh-eating beast even more dangerous to my own species? Gee, I don’t know; make it intelligent enough to outsmart us? Done!” Now just watch the body count grow.
But that’s ok, really, because I like watching humanity shoot themselves in the foot with their own (carnivorous) hubris. And all the dinosaurs look great, too. The technology has improved and advanced so the CG and the animatronic dinos are more realistic than ever. And there’s plenty of fleeing humans to boot. Yay!
There’s some some pretty solid acting here across the board, though it’s all very much as you would expect. Everyone hits the right note at the right moment. As is each shot and set up, and musical cue. In fact, the strongest part of Jurassic World is the construction. Director Colin Trevorrow deftly handles this material as Spielberg might, or perhaps a Spielberg-in-training, anyway. It’s all very professional and by-the-book for this sort of family action film, but it still manages to be fun. And frankly, the scene where all the pteradactyls are flying about and attacking people like a prehistoric version of The Birds is worth the price of admission alone just to see how much a man can value a margarita. Just trust me on this.
Three – three and half kittenhands for Jurassic World, believe it or not. It won’t amaze you, but you’ll have a good time in the movie theater with this. Drink up!
~ Neil T. Weakley, your average movie-goer; I’m more of a mojito guy, really. But Jimmy Buffet knows his priorities: when fleeing dinosaurs, the most important thing to save is the booze.