We Need More Teeth !

Rating: 6/10 (11 July 2015)

Gray and Zach's parents send them on a holiday to dinosaur theme park Jurassic World, where their Aunt Claire is a senior official. Once there however a top secret new exhibit - the Indominus Rex - breaks out of its enclosure and starts wreaking havoc. It's up to Aunt Claire and park ranger Owen to save the kids.
This is the third sequel to Steven Spielberg's classic 1992 monster movie and, like all sequels, covers the same ground as the original, but is likable, well made, well acted, exciting, and has a good balance of action, scares and laughs. Visually, it's beautiful to look at, with fabulous sets by Ed Verreaux and excellent visual effects by Tim Alexander and Glen McIntosh. The genetically modified Indominus Rex is nice and scary but just a T-Rex variant, but for dinosaur fans there are some great creatures on show, such as the huge aquatic Mosasaur, the spiky-armour club-tailed Ankylosaurus, an epic Pteranodon flying attack sequence and those perennial Jurassic film favourites the Velociraptors. The human cast are equally good, with Howard doing a terrific transformation from soulless corporate businesswoman into breathless, ripped-clothes, monster-fighting Sheena Queen Of The Jungle, Pratt a solid square-jawed traditional macho hero, and D'Onofrio stealing the show as the sneaky bad guy with the military agenda and a great cheesy last speech. My only problem with the film is the too-busy script, which has so many threads (the boys' divorcing parents, the brothers bonding theme, Claire and Owen's old romance, Claire's career aspirations, Masrani's misguided philanthropy, the gene-splicing corporate espionage, the raptor training, the military asset angle, the let's-eat-the-tourists threat, the control room takeover, several others); once it settles down into the main rescue the kids and save the day story, it's much more focused and dramatic. The golden rule in most things is keep it simple, and movie scripts are no exception. But all in all a good Saturday afternoon creature feature, with a solid cast and thrills aplenty. Featuring yet another excellent score by the prolific Michael Giacchino - the wordless scene where Owen and Claire come across the dying Apatosaurus is perhaps the best in the movie - this is good blockbuster monster fun.