Not a new direction - more of a Jurassic Park re-hash.

Rating: 5/10 (3 August 2015)

I was a big fan of the first movie. To be honest, I thought it was the last TRUE summer blockbuster. I read the Michael Chrichton novels and enjoyed them they way a diabetic enjoys an ice cream cone; truly a guilty pleasure. Giving in to the suspension of disbelief, I had a blast seeing the first film, an okay time with The Lost World and a slightly better time with Jurassic Park III. The two sequels drew a lot of the story plots from the two Jurassic Park books, which was great, since Michael Chrichton had a wonderful imagination and was a talented story teller.
Herein lies my issues with the re-boot, Jurassic World. It's simply a re-hash of the original films. There was a lot of scene-for-scene copying going on. Two kids being looked after by an aunt (instead of an uncle)? Check! A dinosaur expert to save the day? Check! A woman who screams, "RUN!"? Check! T-Rex roaring at the end of the film? Check! The only thing missing was Newman, but at least they got his jeep to make a cameo. Seeing as Newman got eaten in the first movie, I suppose that's excusable.
I think I should have seen this movie in 3D to get the full movie-ride experience out of it. Unfortunately, I waited around and missed my opportunity and saw it 2D at a (fairly packed) theater. The noise was all there, the chase scenes using a motorcycle and ORVs was there, Jeff Goldblum's photograph was there, which makes me think he's going to be in the Jurassic World sequel. What was missing? Well, Michael Chrichton's imagination for starters.
The writers grabbed all of Chrichton's (RIP) original ideas and made them unoriginal. Directing was poor; the only character development worth mentioning was what they did with the genetically modified alpha beast. To be honest, there was almost too much happening on-screen and at times, it seemed like the CGI rendering couldn't keep up with the processing speed of the computers they were using to build the animation. In 3D, you probably wouldn't notice, but in 2D, the poor flicker rate was enough to give me a headache that lasted for the rest of the day.
Overall, the movie was a fun summertime romp. If you can catch it in 3D, give it a shot. Otherwise, wait for it to show up as a rental. It's about as worthy as sequel to the franchise as The Lost World was... maybe a little worse.
5-stars seems like a fair review from my perspective.