A big, dumb, mindlessly entertaining monster movie. Don't expect more

Rating: 7/10 (14 June 2015)

"Jurassic Park" is widely regarded as one of Steven Spielberg's greatest achievements, and why shouldn't it be? Groundbreaking special effects, memorable characters, and marvellous direction that interweaves moments of tension, terror, humour and pure spectacle, all within a two-hour frame. The film is given layers from great performances, solid writing, and the previously mentioned masterful direction. But underneath all of these layer, at the film's very core, it's kind of a silly monster movie.
"Jurassic World" completely embraces its silliness, and in an era where most blockbusters take themselves a bit too seriously, this is a refreshing change of pace.
Ever since the first trailer dropped, the film has been receiving many premature criticisms. Right off the bat, many scoffed at the idea that anyone would actually try to create a dinosaur theme park with all of the known horrible failures that have occurred in the past. All I can say to that is that if you can't buy the premise, you shouldn't waste your time and money to watch this movie. I know it's tempting to go see a movie that looks dumb, just to have the satisfaction of complaining about it on the internet, but trust me, you'll live a happier life if you just avoid the film altogether (although judging from its historic opening weekend, I'm assuming most of the people reading this review haven't avoided it).
Another concept that many had trouble grasping is the idea of Chris Pratt's trained velociraptors. Personally, I thought this was an interesting idea. Many highly intelligent and dangerous animals can be trained by humans (I'm assuming most of you have heard of SeaWorld), so I thought this was an interesting new direction for the franchise's greatest antagonists. Besides, we've seen villainous raptors in all of the previous films, so I had no problem with the filmmakers taking them in this direction. One thing I can say is that the film manages to 'have its cake and eat it too' regarding the raptors.
The Indominus Rex was very silly, but worked well as the antagonist for this kind of movie. It was very "Predator-esque" (cloaking ability, chase scene through a jungle and down a waterfall, "It's hunting for sport"), which, as a "Predator" fan, I quite enjoyed.
In the best that doesn't involve dinosaurs, Henry Wu (BD Wong) and Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) have a heated discussion about the cloning process of the dinosaurs. Wu states that "nothing in Jurassic World is natural", and that the dinosaurs they have created are very different from what dinosaurs were really like 65 million years ago. This subtly tackles an issue that the more scientifically savvy fans of the franchise had with this installment. "Jurassic Park" created a massive amount of public interest in dinosaurs, so tons of research has been done since 1993. In this research, scientists have discovered that dinosaurs very likely had feathers. Not just the little mohawks they gave the raptors in "JP3", but full-on covered in feathers. This one simple line from BD Wong kind of cancels out that entire argument against the film.
Now of course, this is no masterpiece. Obviously, this is several notches below the ranks of the original film (did anyone really expect otherwise?). There are MANY straight-up dumb moments that hurt my enjoyment of the film. Mostly stemming from the kids.
These kids, man, they were annoying. Surprisingly, the younger one (Ty Simpkins) wasn't too bad. He acted the way I imagine a dinosaur- loving child would act in a theme park full of dinosaurs. But his older brother (Nick Robinson) was just a miserable character. His characteristics include being all mopey and uninterested while he's in the most unbelievably cool place on earth. And... that's pretty much it. Oh, and he's constantly gawking at girls the entire trip, but that running joke(?) ends up going nowhere. I understand that the filmmakers were going for the idea that "people in this day and age are bored of dinosaurs" and that Robinson's character is the embodiment of the fictional public's views on dinosaurs. That doesn't make him any less annoying. No offense to the actor, I'm sure he was doing the best with what he was given, but seriously, I really wanted him to get eaten more than any other character (that includes Vincent D'Onofrio's wonderfully slimy performance). I find it hard to root for a character who has (as established in the first scene) a girlfriend, yet is continuously drooling over every female within 100 yards.
An minor thing that bothered me was how the kids CONVENIENTLY knew how to fix a jeep that hasn't run in 22 years. A line earlier in the film (rather than right before they start fixing it), establishing that they're good at fixing cars, would've been appreciated. An easy way they could've done this was by showing them get their family's van running in the opening scene. It would've been obvious from that point on that they were eventually going to fix a vehicle at some point, but at least this would've provided some much-needed set-up and payoff.
Overall though, the film is a very fun, mindless way to spend two hours. It's funny, I saw a headline for an article saying something along the lines of "Did Jurassic World get a boost from nostalgia?". Umm, isn't that obvious. The film preys on your childhood love of the original, but it does it in a fairly classy way. Colin Trevorrow and his team are clearly fans of the original film, and show lots of love for it through various nods. Unlike Michael Bay, whose films suggest he truly hates the audience, Trevorrow was clearly aiming at making an enjoyable movie for the fanbase. And also making a bazillion dollars
Cynicism takes a backseat when you're having shameless, nostalgic fun, and when the Tyrannosaurus Rex's iconic roar blasts through the auditorium, it's hard not to become riddled with joy.