Great to look at but otherwise not much

Rating: 5/10 (19 June 2015)

The action in 'Jurassic World' is great. I mean how could it not be? As if dinosaurs by themselves aren't exciting enough, here we have genetically mutated, hybrid dinosaurs that are better and more powerful than ever before. So why does the film feel so flat? The reason is because the fate of almost every character can be predicted from the second we meet them - and the ones that are safest get the most screen time. There was absolutely no way any of the four main characters Owen, Claire, Zach or Gray were ever going to die in this film so every action scene with them in danger just comes across mundane and pointless. Now you could probably say this about a lot of movies where certain characters feel safe, but having four of them is just too much. Contrastly there were characters that were just a ticking time bomb and sure enough were gobbled up by the end. The whole thing was even more predictable than usual.
The movie is visually stunning. The dinosaurs are incredibly well animated and the action scenes are well directed. Sadly this is really all it has going for it though. An enormous amount of the jokes fell flat. A full theatre and obvious jokes didn't even raise a murmur anywhere in the room. I think this was more down to poor delivery by the actors than the writing itself. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are passable in their performances but it must be said that everyone else was pretty forgettable and even bad in their role. Nick Robinson was particularly average - just having been chased through the jungle by a dinosaur and he can't even change the flat tone of this voice for one line. Not much to see here. Watch the original 'Jurassic Park' again instead. At least that one had some originality to it.