3.25/5

Rating: 6/10 (8 December 2015)

Here we are again. In the year of studio attempts to re-vitalize dead sci-fi franchises, it's Jurassic Park's turn. We all know how most of these types of films turn out(Mad Max excluded.) It's rare when the fan base of a film embraces one of these. They've got greed, marketing, and goals to make it big overseas all over them. So it's up to the director and the writer to try and get around it, to get their vision worked into to something that is the closest thing to a manufactured product in the movie industry. With this film, director Colin Trevorrow(Safety Not Guaranteed) has tried to turn it into a "meta" joke. Constant references to how "the old park was cooler" or how "these dinosaurs are becoming products" are funny when they work, and a little painful when they don't. And that's basically the movie. When it works, it re-captures, if not Spielbergian wonder, at least early Michael Bay. When it doesn't, it feels more like late Michael Bay. In the film, Jurassic World is a national sensation, and they are trying to boost their sales by making a "new dinosaur." In the indominus Rex. The head of all this is a caricature of a working woman, who is super-organized, not married, and bad with kids(a worn out cliché we've seen a thousand times.) She's played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who's fine, though she's not given much. When said dinosaur escapes, she teams up with a sexy man with huge abs that's basically good at everything. This caricature of a male hero is played by Chris Pratt. He's definitely the joy of the movie. His lines are the funniest, hit the hardest, and made me wish I was watching Guardians 2. To further complicate things, Dallas Howard's two nephews are also in the park. One is really horny and the other is sad about his parents divorce. A representative from Ingen(Vincent D'Onofrio) is trying to buy velociraptors for war in the middle east. That actually happens. The characters are one-dimensional, the plot is asinine, and when Dallas Howard breaks down and cries over a dead dinosaur when she's just watch 10 humans get brutally murdered, I lost all hope for a return to form for the franchise. There's also the matter of the child performances. It's safe to say that most sitcoms get better kid actors nowadays. But, on the positive side of things, the film looks great, and the action is shot well. That in itself is a revelation. When Pterodactyls fly over a screaming crowd, when a giant sea monster eats a shark, when the indominus Rex attacks, it feels like a real blockbuster. In one scene, an assistant suffers a prolonged demise at the hands of several dinosaurs. It's easily the best scene in the film. It feels like the original, when a greedy lawyer met his end in a prolonged sequence inside a bathroom stall. Like I said, a lot of the self-referential jokes actually work, and add a bit of depth to this otherwise childishly shallow affair. Honestly, "Jurassic World" isn't terrible, but it's certainly not good either. It's a bit of a mess, but a mess that kind of works. It's just okay, and for a sequel to one of the greatest sci-fi films ever made, just okay is not good enough.