Some great concepts, a nice budget, but poor execution

Rating: 6/10 (11 June 2015)

Whilst I loved the first two Jurassic Park movies and enjoyed the third, this one felt a bit lacking. We went to see this movie in the latest state of the art theater, laser 3d blabla and in my opinion (and let me put that disclaimer for everything following) they took a great franchise, copy pasted some great things, threw money at it, but forgot the soul, accelerations, thrills and storytelling so greatly mastered by Spielberg. For the positive: - The actors: great casting, I love all of those involved. - The effects: well done indeed. - The new park: breathtaking and quite original at times. - The action: one scene stood out: the one where Chris Pratt joins the raptors on a chase. Great stuff. The negative: - The director, for not utilizing his cast better. Jokes that fall flat or don't get that punchline to where it could've gone. There were some giggles, but with better direction they could've easily had us in stitches. Especially knowing the potential, again, of the cast. The rhythm is also far from as good as the first ones. Now I'm going to be a bit rude and blame a lot on the director, again, just my opinion. Each character's storyline and personality was underdeveloped despite of the aforementioned potential. Story lines are thrown out, left unresolved or lacked closure in a way that wasn't Lost on me. Just ridiculous: - First of all the advertising. I mean are you kidding me. I've just paid a(n un)fair amount on tickets (see comments below about the 3D), the way product-placement was handled here was unsubtle, to say the least. There's some commercials shamelessly woven into the movie. - Some of the action: I'll avoid spoilers, but when you'll see it, I think you'll know what I'm referring to. - Some of those flying dinosaurs. They looked like characters out of the Smurfs to me. - The whole storyline of (again avoiding spoilers) what they use raptors for. - Sound-effects on the raptors. In the end yes, they've managed to add a new scary monster, and it worked out better than anticipated. But in the process they've reduced the feared raptors to lapdogs (in more ways than one) and removed a lot of the threat of the T- rex. Now we went to see it in Laser 3D like I mentioned, but to be honest, the movie was produced in 2013, and I doubt at that time any of this technology was available, because I've seen 3D's in less equipped theaters that blew me away, e.g. the latest X-men, and this one, I really didn't find anything special about it. Also, the score is so underutilized. So if I'm so negative about this one, why did I give it a 6? Because I do want to see a next one and hope they salvage the franchise by steering firmly to the left from this one. And visually the park is great.