Sigh

Rating: 6/10 (14 June 2015)

***Spoilers*** I went to this because I had a free ticket. I decided to use it for Jurassic World because I thought it would be nice to see a good Jurassic Park sequel. Yeah. The first 20 minutes or so were spent introducing characters so stock I could almost see the barcodes on their backs. It was sort of like watching the opening of a Scifi channel original but with pricier stars. A couple of the actors had enough personality to make their characters entertaining-- Jake Johnson, Chris Pratt, Irrfan Khan. The rest barely rose above cardboard level, with the exception of B.D. Wong because he at least got the "Oh that guy from that other movie" response. Bryce Dallas Howard actually managed to make her stock working woman with no time for family who loosens up and learns what's really important when faced with monster death character seem even less lifelike. And didn't even smudge her beige high heels though her hair did get spontaneously curly. I was never the biggest fan of Jurassic Park. I liked it. But it wasn't my favorite move ever. I've seen the second one twice but I couldn't tell you the plot. And I kind of like the third one because I like people in the cast. So I don't have any "this isn't the original so it sucks" feelings. But this movie is sort of the antithesis of the original. That one was scary because it had normal people stuck in a world of dinosaurs. Not supernaturally smart genius indestructible witch dinosaurs, just regular as they might have been dinosaurs. Which was pretty scary. And a lot of the violence was off-screen. You saw a dinosaur then heard screams. But this movie. I am okay with suspension of disbelief. It's a necessary thing when watching movies. So I could go with them having raptors even though they were a huge problem in the first park and they don't even seem to be on public display in Jurassic World so there's no reason for their existence or the risk having them entails. I'm okay with the park apparently having no real evacuation plan other than have everyone stand in the courtyard. I'm okay with them being greedy bastards who think staying in business means building fake extra big extra mean dinosaurs for people to watch stand behind trees or eat tethered goats, and have no plan to neutralize said dinosaur if it escapes. But I am not okay with a dinosaur that is so smart it not only knows that thermal imaging exists and what it is it makes a plan to hide from it. That is so smart it not only knows a tracker was placed in it, it knows what trackers are for and that it should remove it. A dinosaur that is everywhere on the island simultaneously. Plus several other stock things done by stock characters that could in no way ever happen. Is the movie entertaining? Yes. Will you like it if you like to see dinosaurs chomping things? Yes. Should you take little kids to it? No. Will you like it if you think the first movie was one of the best movies ever? Probably not. Will you like it if you have a problem with poorly written characters, bad clichéd dialogue and major plot holes that require you to not only suspend disbelief but to forget that there are any beliefs? No. Right now this has a 7.9. Though it's really just a Scifi channel movie with a bigger budget for special effects and actors. They can be entertaining. But they aren't THAT good.