Welcome Back To The World:

Rating: 8/10 (11 June 2015)

The year is 1993, you go to the theater for Dinosaurs and get the thrill of your life watching humans run from mega sized monsters with the urge to kill. Spielberg's classic Jurassic Park instilled in us a sense of wonder, excitement, and for some of us nightmares as the monsters devoured our cast. Following that, the series hit some rough patches that while visually impressive, lacked the quality the first one did. After a fourteen year hiatus, a fourth installment has finally emerged from the primordial soup to bring us back into the adventure. Tonight I review Jurassic World, so let's jump into the excitement and see if it lives up to hype.
Jurassic World reintroduces the park, which has been upgraded with the latest toys of the modern era. This installment brings us back into the excitement of the park, as you become part of the crowd and experiencing the exhibits first hand. Stunning CGI visuals have once more brought the prehistoric monsters to life, animated beautifully to parade about the park. While not as realistic in terms of textures as the animatronic cousins from the 90's, this reviewer was impressed at the detail they put into making Jurassic World pop off the screen. You've seen most of the magic unfold already on the trailers, but trust me that there is still plenty of sights to behold on the big screen. Seeing the Mosasaur leap out of the water, or watching the terrifying Indominus Rex storm across the fields, the terror you felt back in the day returns with it. When combined with the special effects and sound editing, the scenes are even more thrilling and immersive, so much that you forget you are even watching a movie.
The visuals aren't the only thing that will have you reminiscing back to the original trilogy though. No my friends there are plenty of tributes paid in Jurassic World that had me smiling in delight. It's obvious the design team went back to the roots to craft this adventure, (finally), and managed to pull some of the best qualities from World's predecessors, such as locations, kills, and plot elements, and put a new twist on them. Most of the twists often have are involve action, exciting moments where the orchestra's melodies booming over speakers as our heroes strive to survive. Yes, you read right, Jurassic World is certainly not boring or slow, with almost the entire two hours thrilling in some aspect. And believe it or not the filming and editing itself is on target as well. Camera work is stable, all details captured to maximize the carnage and chaos of the digital images while also capturing the emotions of our group.
While most of the movie is action, don't think that is the only thing you will get in this movie. Amidst the excitement are plenty of touching, emotionally heavy moments that are sure to move you in some way. Some of the scenes involving the dinosaurs and Chris Pratt's character had me almost tearing up, while other times I rolled my eyes at the preachy messages they painstakingly made. Fortunately there is humor thrown into the mix that had me laughing more times than not. Most of the comedy was intentional, some of the dialog timed at just the right moment to break the tension. Some of the jokes were a little pushed on me, but I must say that overall it works, especially with Pratt leading the group in his dynamic ways. The emotional spectrum is well done in this film, and goes back to all the aspects of the first one you love.
Like always though there are some pieces to this movie that aren't all there. First off the build up in the park wasn't there for me in the film. Normally there is an epic buildup to the inevitable dinosaur busting out to hunt, but this film didn't have quite that much thrill that I was looking for. Things progressed too fast before the crap hit the fan, it did leave me a little disappointed. That minor point aside there are times where the ridiculousness of Jurassic World gets stretched a bit much, and no I don't mean the raptor training bit that actually worked. Sure this is a movie where dinosaurs are no longer extinct, but there are a few moments that are a little too stretched or hard to swallow, but again this is a minor moment. The major weakness to this movie is how predictable it is. World's plot writing team really laid out the plot of this movie in the first half hour such as: who would die, how they would die, and how the problem would resolve itself. Thus you can guess I wasn't too terrified or surprised by most of the moments in this movie, though there were some nice surprises. I don't think this will be a problem for most, but this reviewer has to dock some points for this weakness.
Jurassic Word is on point as my friend would say, and is a great reintroduction into Crichton's world. That excitement you felt visiting the park returns once more, and despite the lack of suspense build up, the tale has a much better story than I expected. It certainly is one of the Action/Adventure movies I've seen in a while, and the visual effects are certainly worthy of a big screen visit. Do you see it in 3-D? I can't answer what it did for the movie, but the 2-D movie was certainly great. So my recommendation is go see it soon.
My scores are:
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi: 8.5 Movie Overall: 7.5-8.0