Tough to truly dislike, and I'm glad I took the time to track it down, but Jurassic World does not uproot trees.

Rating: 6/10 (3 April 2016)

Films such as "Jurassic World" are so often the most difficult to review; you find yourself in a strange place wherein you really want to like it, but must remember that impartiality and balance are so crucial as to forging views on anything, that to resist them means to completely waste your time in the first place. There is not, in many ways, much to remark about Jurassic World: it does not overstay its welcome; its second unit content is exciting; it a least attempts something resembling character study and manages to take a franchise into new directions without wrecking too much of the nucleus of the initial idea. Unlike, say, recent "Die Hard" or "Terminator" entries.
Many of the ideas coined in the aftermath of the blow-away 1993 success "Jurassic Park" by critics and theorists remain; observations which were never meant derogatorily, but are either included here out of a rooted urge to stick to the source material or by way of academic homage. Thus, much of what was written twenty years ago with regards to the symmetry between a theme-park ride and a movie going experience with films such as "Jurassic Park" still stand. I believe it was Tom Shone who once remarked that, in a post 1977 Star Wars era, cinema/film-going experiences are becoming more like trips to an amusements park with each passing summer-blockbuster line-up.
In Jurassic World, a tracking shot once we are in the park after some formalities is deliberately set up so as to resemble a standard person's height as the park is entered and a woman steps before us with the line "Welcome to Jurassic World" – it is the closest to a process of breaking the fourth wall that one can realistically come without cordially turning to the camera and asking the salivating multiplex audience if they are ready for what they are about to experience over the next 90 minutes. It does, in many ways, call to mind Spielberg's self-conscious references to the various items of "Jurassic Park" memorabilia which were actually on sale in shops anyway in 1993 by way of his otherwise needless tracking shot around a gift-shop full of theme park memorabilia towards the end of that film.
Two strands set the film running, the likes of which somewhat clumsily merge towards the end. The first revolves around two minors: essentially one child and a teenager with Justin Bieber locks and an eye for the girls. They head to Central America and Jurassic World: a realisation of John Hammond's dream to one day build a theme-park where the dinosaurs are the attraction. This is doubly rewarding, because the head of the park is the aunt Claire, played by Bryce Dallas-Howard.
The second strand follows an Alan Grant-knock off by the name of Owen Grady, played with a really good balance of energy and vulnerability by Chris Pratt. Grady works in a strange capacity as some sort of dinosaur trainer; a process whereby the once-feared velociraptors are now essentially pets performing tricks at a click. Occupying him on his strand is Vincent D'Onfrio's shady Vic Hoskins, who wants the raptors signed over to the military to essentially fight Al-Qaeda, but we have previous experience of this archetype by way of Paul Riser's character in James Cameron's "Aliens".
He is present in the park to help Claire with a new hybrid dinosaur the park has created: the Indominus-Rex, which is director Colin Trevorrow's taking of the franchise to bigger places: "The Lost World" needed to put a Tyrannosaurus Rex in an urban environment; "Jurassic Park 3" needed its Spinosaurus to juice up proceedings and now the 2015 vintage technically needs something that doesn't even exist to keep people interested. With a Tyrannosaurus-Rex in place of the lab-creation, but the film exactly as it otherwise is, things just wouldn't be as much fun. The trouble is, this new creation, echoing perhaps Frankenstien's Monster, is a bloodthirsty killer which does not take to being caged up, and it is not long before things get out of hand once it cuts loose. What follows is essentially a B-movie trussed up like an A-movie, an old adage which, I believe, was once attributed to Spielberg's "Jaws" anyway, although not in a derogatory manner, as the kids strive to survive in the wilderness; the park tries to contain the Indominus and Vincent D'Onofrio refuses to take "no" for an answer.
Along the way, we get plenty of dino-on-human and dino-on-dino action, but Trevorrow has a trick up his sleeve and it is the development of the Dallas-Howard character, whom is transformed from cold and robotic bureaucrat barely able to recall her nephew's name to hard-bodied supporting heroine on the front-line saving their lives. A very physical epitome of this might be the moment she physically tears away some of her clothes beside a waterfall in order to shed one 'skin' and embrace another. Various "body" theories have been coined about allowing the viewer to technically gauge just how far along the film has progressed by the state of a lead character's "body" without so much as even glancing at a watch.
Alas there is not much to marvel at away from the heavy spectacle of dinosaurs doing what dinosaurs used to do to one another, not to mention what they would almost certainly do to human-beings if in close proximity to them, aside from Dallas-Howard's aforementioned arc. Colin Trevorrow should strike us as a shrewd director, in that he manages to pay homage to the 1993 original in fairly audacious ways without ever really encroaching on it. Despite this, he manages to take what now appears to be a franchise that has been re-energised and reinvigorated to new and exciting places. The film is for sure a success, but is not innocent of lacking in several areas.