Beautiful scenery, bad story, lame characters

Rating: 3/10 (22 June 2015)

This is a really bad movie! Of course, this being the 3rd sequel I wasn't expecting that much. Kind of like when I went to see Jurassic Park 3. Only then I was positively surprised. In contrast to most other reviews, I must say JP3 was much better than this Identity-struggling, standing-on-shoulders-of-giants disaster. No suspense, no build-up, no identity, bad, ridiculous previsible story.
There won't be need for a parody of this movie, because it handles that part very well on its own. Of course most people can tell the story without watching it: Dinosaurs get loose and hunt/eat people. That was the case even in the first Jurassic Park. But then there was an eerie feeling, a building up of the scenario and a perfect atmosphere where the grandeur of John Hammond's top-of-the line theme park vision, the struggles of humans trying to control nature, and the chaos theory that Ian Malcom explained so well. Here, we meet a bunch of bland characters, setting the stage for an obvious story development. The genetical modification of dinosaurs that this movie revolves around feels like something the writers just came up with, in order to be able to bring something new - a dinosaur we've never seen or heard about before, to the table. Then there is the pseudo-shady military bio-weapons scheme that is also attached. This part is very similar to many other sci-fi movie plots, and one that has worked well before. In JW, however, this aspect, as well as all others - the suppressed romance between Owen and Claire , the family problems of Zach and Gray, the adventure of a dinosaur theme park, the disaster movie scenario with thousands of people in danger, never get to develop and give the movie some sort of identity. It's like the movie tries to be all these genres, and becomes neither. Throw in dinosaurs, problematic kids, a silly billionaire who flies a helicopter, a nerdy computer guy, a poorly constructed bio-weapons plot, a romance between the rugged animal trainer and the high-heeled business woman. Then show small parts of all this without any connection to each other while trying to keep all these events unfolding in a somewhat logical way time-wise and you got Jurassic World. There is never any suspense, and the ending is so ridiculous it is on par with 2014 Godzilla.
However, there are some things I do like about this movie. The scenery is beautiful, and the look of the park with all it's details - petting zoo with small dinos, souvenirs, amazing tours in trains, gyrospheres, boulevards with restaurants etc. really manages to build off of the very clever product placement of movie merchandise in the first Jurassic Park, while also modernizing the dinosaur theme park concept. It all looks quite realistic in terms of how I imagine a Dino park would look and present itself. There are also some nice easter eggs, hints and memorabilia from the original movie, which makes you smile a bit, but you also can't help but feel they were thrown in there in the same, almost haphazardly way as the previously mentioned movie stereotypes. The park, as it looks during the introductory 20-30 minutes of the movie looks quite welcoming and like a place that would be a fantastic experience was it real. However, I could have settled for 30 minutes of just watching the park and the concepts in it, without having to suffer through the intellect-raping attempt at a story.
Recommended instead: a couple of episodes of Walking with Dinosaurs.