Flaccid World

Rating: 5/10 (28 June 2015)

The fourth Jurassic Park movie lacks the excitement and creativity of its progenitor. Although it is set some twenty years after the events of the first film, and although the similar plot centers around a theme park with live dinosaurs, there appear to have been no lessons learned. The entire movie feels as if the viewer is stranded on the island with everyone else, except that they're on the Island of Poor Decision-Making Skills and not fabled Isla Nublar.
Like most people, I was pretty charged up to see the new movie, since it'd been so long since the first go-around that the special effects have become much more invigorating and realistic. As fate would have it, however, the effects looked to be about the same as they had been in 1993, and that's saying something. I even saw the movie in 3D, thinking that lifelike dinosaurs would help make good use of that technology. Nothing doing. The 3D felt almost nonexistent, and not in the sense that it melted into the background (so to speak). It felt, in fact, as if someone had forgotten to leave it on for the duration of the movie.
Jurassic World is set in what's more or less the present day. The park has indeed reopened, under the stewardship of Masrani (Irrfan Khan of Life of Pi). Masrani presents himself as someone who doesn't care so much about profits as he does about people being entertained and wowed by the park's attractions. Yes, sort of reminiscent of John Hammond (Sir Richard Attenborough) and his grand vision for the original park. Masrani's operations manager Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), as the movie opens, is showing off the park to potential sponsors. You know, like the Coca-Cola Pavilion at the World's Fair. Or whoever sponsors Spaceship Earth in EPCOT Center, for those of you who have no idea what the World's Fair was.
The same day that Claire meets with the sponsors, her nephews Gray and Zach arrive for some bonding time. Seems Mom and Dad decided to send the boys to the park so that they could interact with Aunt Claire, who hasn't seen them in seven years or so. The presence of the kids on the island forecasts doom from the get-go, because certainly at some point they need to be imperiled. Don't worry; they will be. Being a stereotypical hard-driven, childless woman, Claire hands the boys over to her British assistant, who promptly loses (is ditched by) them. Older brother Zach is moody and somewhat sullen, as teenage boys are wont to be, and younger brother Gray is full of both energy and dino details, much like Timmy from JP1.
This time around, the big attractions aren't the T-Rexes (or their exes - ha!); they're bigger and badder. The park's new creature is called Indominus rex, which turns out to be a hybrid of a T-rex and several other animals. Don't ask which animals; it's a secret to everyone, even Claire and Masrani. At any rate, to make sure everything's good to go before the new dinos are unveiled to the public, park trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) is called in to evaluate little Indommy's paddock. The paddock looks secure, all right, but wouldn't you know it, the beast appears to have departed, presumably for a place where one can swallow cows whole without having to wait for a server to show up.
And with that, our plot is really set in motion. There's a dino on the loose! It's funny how this keeps happening. Only now, instead of a few people who are scoping out the park before it officially opens, there are tens of thousands of people on the island, with the park fully open for business. But there's no reason to close the park, right? Of course not! It is not revealing anything of importance to mention that the first group of guards to try to contain Indominus carry nonlethal weapons. You know, so they can stun a seven-story tall monster. This is not as effective as you might think.
Jurassic World is much more action movie than sci-fi movie. Instead of human characters exhibiting human characteristics, we're presented with an relatable group of people. Pratt's Owen is a hero, a good guy who has qualms about mistreating all creatures, but he's more Rambo than Indiana Jones - or Alan Grant. I like that he's there to save us all, but the lack of development of his character, who's sort of a combination of Grant and Ian Malcolm, means the movie takes a step backward in terms of fundamentally sound, creative writing. Perhaps this is the result of four different people having a hand in the screenplay.
If you're too young to have experienced Jurassic Park or just plain like dumb and loud action movies, Jurassic World should please you. Kids should like it, particularly since there's little to really scare the pants off them. There are several homages to not only the first JP but also JP II and JP III, which does place this one solidly in the same cinematic universe as those other three. But two hours of chase scenes interrupted by too many haphazardly animated, similar-looking dinosaurs fighting each other and smashing humans may grow tiresome as you await the inevitable and foregone conclusion. Not to mention the obvious setup for a fifth movie.