Enjoyable but don't think too hard

Rating: 8/10 (7 August 2016)

This was a very enjoyable movie that I watched at home, not in the theater. I saw the original "Jurassic Park" years ago in the movie theater when it came out. I don't really remember too much of it and haven't seen any of the sequels.
The movie was a good horror/thrill ride. The first part has you waiting for the terrible things to happen, and it builds a lot of good suspense by slowly introducing all of the characters, and the dinosaurs, and it has plenty of foreshadowing as well.
I thought they picked really great actors, especially Bryce Dallas Howard and Vincent D'Onofrio. Chris Pratt is always great, especially as the hero like he is here. The actors playing the kids and the other roles were also very good. It was fabulous to see BD Wong as well, playing another mad scientist like he does on "Gotham." They don't do a fantastic job building the characters, though, or giving us their motivation. I thought that Hoskins was particularly bad and hard to understand. It didn't make sense that he wanted to use the dinosaurs to fight, yet he didn't seem to understand how dangerous they were and seemed to think that he could control them as well as Owen. It made him seem like an idiot. A villain is much better if he's not stupid.
All of the special effects were good, and the dinos seemed real. They had great action and chase scenes.
I was really surprised when the T Rex showed up at the end out of nowhere. Did they mention it somewhere in the movie before that and I somehow missed it? I don't know. Maybe they just assume you saw the previous movies so you would suspect he was lurking around somewhere. To me it just seemed ridiculous that all of a sudden, Claire almost literally pulled this T Rex out of her back pocket and pointed it at the I Rex, and the T Rex just did what they wanted and then sauntered off without killing anyone or anything else. At least with the raptors attacking it, that made sense since they had a previous relationship with Owen.
So the ending was a bit of a Deux Ex Machine. Unpredictable, sure, but laughable.
When the monsters were fighting at the end, I was reminded of the old Godzilla movies I used to watch as a kid. I lived in an inner city, and the local rec center showed a lot of free movies during the summer. They showed us all of the old Godzilla movies, and I loved them. So, that was a highlight of this movie for me - the nostalgia.
Seeing T Rex, though, I couldn't help but wonder how he could so easily beat up the other monster, with his tiny little Donald Trump-like hands. And T Rex is a meat eater, so why didn't it just eat the other monster dinosaur? Or was that too gruesome? I really liked the raptors and was upset when they were hurt or killed as well as the ankylosaurus.
Another dumb thing was when the kids started the jeep on their own and drove off. I'm no car expert, but that seemed ridiculous. However, that whole scene where they find the whole Jurassic Park area was really cool, and I'm sure all fans loved that part as well as the many mentions of the older movies and their characters.
I was a bit surprised that in the end, they never explained what would happen to the island or its dinosaurs. What happened to all of those winged dinosaurs (Pterodactyls or whatever)? Did they fly off to other parts of the world? Anyway, I enjoyed it, and I'm glad I watched it. I probably would have enjoyed it in the theater as well. It was worth my time.