Fourth Time Out With The Dinosaurs...And So Much More

Rating: 8/10 (20 June 2015)

Michael Crichton, who passed away in the fall of 2008, may not have realized the kind of goldmine he struck when he published his dinosaur novel "Jurassic Park" in 1990; but with director Steven Spielberg's help, that goldmine was open for business with the original 1993 film version, and then with its 1997 sequel THE LOST WORLD. Due to Spielberg being heavily involved in making A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE in 2001, the third "Jurassic Park" film was left in the hands of director Joe Johnston, with Spielberg staying on as executive producer. Incredibly enough, another fourteen years would pass until the move-going public got the fourth in the series, JURASSIC WORLD.
Twenty-two years after John Hammond's experiment at producing an innovative theme part with genetically-created dinosaurs on an island some 200 miles off of Costa Rica came crashing down with the dinosaurs consuming several people, now that same island, Isla Nublar, is now home to Jurassic World, a highly innovative theme park with bigger and better dinosaurs, and, hopefully, with greater controls. One of the workers, an ex-Navy seaman (Chris Pratt), has become especially attuned to a number of the raptors in the park, and has managed to earn their trust. At the same time, the park's principal supervisor (Bryce Dallas Howard) has been overseeing the creation of a super-dinosaur, made up of the DNA of the previous species of dinosaurs, including velociraptors, and tyrannosaurus rexes, that has guaranteed an up tick in revenue and park attendance. But as with anything involving the technology used in creating creatures that have been extinct from the Earth's surface for sixty-five million years, soon everything turns upside down. This doesn't stop the park's main security chief (Vincent D'Onofrio) from seeing a way to use these dinosaurs as a weapon of war, over the vehement objections of both Pratt and Howard, as well as one of the original scientists (B.D. Wong) from the original Jurassic Park. Upping the ante still further are the fact that Howard's two nephews (Nick Robinson; Ty Simpkins) have come to the island to be with their aunt; instead, they find themselves having to behave like responsible adults in the most horrible way possible when the mayhem created by the "super-dinosaur" allows all the other species out of their enclosures. When D'Onofrio's megalomaniacal ambitions result in his death, it is up to Pratt and Howard to destroy the super dinosaur with all the weapons at their disposal.
As with JURASSIC PARK III, Spielberg's involvement in directing another film (in this case the World War II spy thriller BRIDGE OF SPIES) led him to taking the role of executive producer, allowing Colin Treverrow, whose only feature film credit before this was the romantic comedy drama SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED in 2012, to direct it. With help from co-writers Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, and Derek Connally, however, Treverrow managed to cobble together elements of the first three films into a coherent, if not necessarily letter-perfect, science fiction/suspense thriller that, in some interesting twists, pays homage not only two its three predecessors, but also to Spielberg's 1975 classic JAWS (as the super-dinosaur eats a Great White shark to the amazement of the 20,000+ people in attendance), and to Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 horror classic THE BIRDS (as the avian dinosaurs attack the park visitors from the air with sometimes bloody results).
It is not a mark against either the film or Treverrow to say that the film misses the verve and panache of the first two movies that were directed by Spielberg in masterful fashion, though one sometimes wishes he had concentrated as much on characters as he did on the mayhem. Nevertheless, Pratt (ZERO DARK THIRTY; GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY) and Howard (LADY IN THE WATER) do really good turns as a pair, despite the rather clichéd bickering they do at the start; and Robinson and Simpkins make for as appealing a pair of kids as Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards did in Spielberg's original. Giacchino's score is impressive as well, and he wisely interpolates John Williams' themes from Spielberg's first two films while also incorporating some of his own ideas.
The final verdict when it comes to JURASSIC WORLD is that, despite its tendency to fall into predictability in terms of the dinosaur attacks and some cardboard characters, it is far better than most summer CGI film fare, with enough Spielberg influence to keep it from being just another blockbuster, resulting in my giving it an '8' rating.