Dumb but exciting and fun

Rating: 7/10 (19 June 2015)

Jurassic Park is smart, funny, awe-inspiring and includes some of the most thrilling scenes in film history. It's legendary. Though it was followed by two lackluster sequels, The Lost World and Jurassic Park III, they did not take away the magic of the original film. Now, after 14 years, we have a fourth installment.
Jurassic World begins by giving us something the other films never did, a fully functioning park filled with visitors from all over the world. Also, unlike the first two sequels, our expectations are brought to an all-new low within the first act thanks to concepts that threaten to spoil what made the first film so iconic. Jurassic Park did for velociraptors what Jaws did for sharks. Both are forces of nature that should never be tamed or trained. Chris Pratt plays a rugged raptor trainer. Bryce Dallas Howard plays the woman in-charge of running the park. Her two nephews, Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson, are two of many visitors on the day the events of the film unfold. We are also introduced to two villains, Vincent D'Onofrio, who wants to train velociraptors to be soldiers, and a hybrid dinosaur called the Indominus Rex.
A hybrid dinosaur and training raptors to be used as weapons for war - it all sounds pretty dumb and it is. As all of this ridiculousness plays out, the original theme music that would play to help build up the most wondrous parts of the first film is over-used and in all the wrong places. Even worse, after the film moves into it's second act and the action has begun, we are forced back to ride along with the boys, who the screenwriters seem desperate to make us care about with an out-of-place conversation about their parents getting a divorce. It's almost as if Jurassic World sets itself up to disappoint, putting the bar so low in it's first hour that it can only be raised in it's second. If this is the trick Colin Trevorrow is trying to pull on us, he is very successful at it.
Jurassic World is a complete failure at being smart and frightening. With all the advanced technology and far-fetched concepts, it's hard to feel any sense of reality or familiarity, two essential ingredients in making us feel as if we are in the character's shoes. There are moments where the filmmakers try to startle us but these attempts at jump-scares are so obvious and poorly executed, they fail. What Jurassic World succeeds at is destroying it's own creations. It's only when the character's lives are in danger that they finally come alive and prove their worth. In the end, Bryce Dallas Howard becomes as bad ass as Chris Pratt.
Everything new Jurassic World introduces us to twists back on itself and lets us know that we were right all along, they were all bad ideas. A big part of what made us love that first film so much is brought back in the most exciting of ways. The climax is what we've always wanted out of a Jurassic Park sequel. It's dumb but it's also as exciting and fun as blockbusters get these days. It has the potential to make you feel like a kid again, even if just for a few minutes. But, you have to be willing to let it.