Maybe not a triumph, but it does feature a Triumph

Rating: 8/10 (5 September 2015)

Man, people are really tearing this movie apart. Yeah, it's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it was a heck of a lot of fun.
Seeing the amazing new park in action was brilliant -- for me, it brought back the thrill from 1993 or whatever when I first looked up at the big screen and watched that sweeping shot of brontosauruses and other dinosaurs grazing leaves and wading in the river -- back when good CGI still packed that "wow" factor. Sadly, we hardly get to see all of the new park's amazing features and the attractions it offers (aside from the nifty gyro-ball-vehicles) before it all goes haywire. I know audiences want to get to the action, but it was all so stunning, another five minutes wouldn't have killed anyone ... literally.
I thought the creation of the new species of dinosaur seemed logical from a capitalism standpoint, and were it handled differently it could have been a profound statement on the dangers of exploratory genetic engineering and efforts to create "designer pets" by tinkering with nature. The whole scenario took me back to something Ian Malcolm said in Crichton's original novel about Hammond not producing "real" dinosaurs but facsimiles of dinosaurs -- illusions of dinosaurs or something to that effect. Too bad Malcolm wasn't in this movie to deliver that dialogue, but it would have felt heavy-handed to bring him or any of the other characters from previous films back ... although a William H. Macy-getting-eaten cameo would have made me laugh out loud.
Some people didn't like the appearance of gear from the original film in Jurassic World, but to me it served to show the passage of time and in a way filled in the blanks about what had happened. It was a nice bit of showing and not telling.
I thought the female lead was rather poorly done, at least the way she failed to keep track of her sister's children. She had good chemistry with Pratt though, but yeah ... she should have been raptor chow.
And speaking of Chris Pratt ... by the end of the movie my girlfriend wanted to make out with him, and I would have let him and then stood in line to give him a high-five, ha! What a bad ass! This ain't your daddy's Robert Muldoon who didn't even have his weapon ready while hunting raptors, this was a guy who stood toe-to-toe with them and bossed them around with hand signals -- sort of like a dinosaur Peyton Manning.
Bonus points for Pratt delivering arguably the best line in a film for the past five years: "Who's the alpha?" "I am." I actually said "YES!" when I heard that ... it's a little cheesy, but come on! It's supposed to be fun. A good monster movie needs a hero that can hold his own, and Pratt's character brought together a little Alan Grant with his bond with and compassion for the animals and a little Muldoon with his ability to kick some butt at a moment's notice.
Finally, my dad has a 1963 Triumph Scrambler out in the barn at home ... so seeing that Triumph tear through the jungle leading a pack of raptors after the mutant-o-saurus ... whoa, that was awesome! Realistically, Pratt should have gone over the handlebars sometime in the first 20 seconds of that chase and also been Raptor Chow, but it was an awesome image and a bit of escapism.
I gave it high marks because honestly, this is the most fun I've had at a movie in a long, long time. I'm sort of ignoring its minor flaws because as a whole it really delivers on what a good summer popcorn movie should be.