One heck of a mixed bag

Rating: 6/10 (8 December 2015)

As a huge fan of the original JURASSIC PARK - I was twelve years old when I saw it in 1993, pretty much the perfect age - I was eager to check out this all-new and revamped sequel/update of the premise. At the same time, I pretty much dismissed memories of the previous two sequels, which were entirely forgettable and sub-par popcorn flicks.
The new JURASSIC PARK is one heck of a mixed bag as a film. It contains many, many flaws and parts I hated, alongside some good moments that I enjoyed. It's very similar to the new TERMINATOR GENISYS in that respect, although an improvement over the Schwarzenegger movie. The good parts of JURASSIC WORLD are invariably those which involve the dinosaurs; when the dinos are on screen, the film is great; when they're off, it's a failure.
The main problem lies in the writing of the human characters. It took four scriptwriters to concoct this mess, and what we get IS nothing more than a mess. There are gender stereotypes and a clichéd romance straight out of a 1970s-era Mills & Boon novel. There are annoying kids throughout, one of whom is as creepy as hell, the other a crying little brat. Chris Pratt and Irrfan Khan are the best of the human cast, as their natural charisma comes through, but Bryce Dallas Howard is hopeless, the worst I've ever seen her. Attempts at characterisation and to make her character funny fall flat every time and as for her stilted acting...well, I was cringing. This film has a real problem with the female characters and the kids.
The human plots are poor and sloppily put together. The first half of the film has the real sense of the intricacies of running a theme park, then all of that gets forgotten about in the second in favour of a small-scale human drama. Vincent D'Onofrio is likable but attempts to turn his character into a bad guy (when he clearly isn't) are pitiful. Plus, I hated the way we finally get to see a populated theme park with thousands of visitors, only for them to remain off screen and irrelevant for most of the time, aside from in a 5 minute set-piece, then they're forgotten about.
So, that's all the bad stuff. The good news is that the dinosaurs are great and great fun to watch. CGI effects have improved to the point when they look very good indeed, particularly the underwater dinosaur. The Indominus rex is a fitting menace, although the real stars of the show are the Velociraptors, who have a sub-plot (i.e. they're tame) which could have been the cheesiest thing ever, but which turns out to be the best thing in the movie. The monster action at the climax of this movie is excellent stuff indeed and it makes for far better spectacle than the recent GODZILLA remake. So, there you have JURASSIC WORLD: a mix of the great, the awful, and the generally humdrum, but it provides a fitfully entertaining thrill-ride if you do your best to ignore the pitifully written characters.