Spielberg Magic, This Is Not. Still, a Visit to Jurassic World Is Worth the Price of Admission.

Rating: 7/10 (12 June 2018)

You may have heard some critics champion Jurassic World as "The best Jurassic Park sequel", some fans declare that it "brought them back to their childhood", and others who may have made the absurd claim, "It's better than the original". Don't believe the hype. Jurassic World is nowhere close to the best Jurassic Park sequel (Spielberg's own, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, will always have that title). It is not going to bring you back to your childhood, and it doesn't hold a candle to what Steven Spielberg and crew accomplished with the original Jurassic Park. That being said, in a time of dark, self-serious, and pretentious blockbusters such as last year's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes or Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight films, Jurassic World is a refreshing antidote. Light, wholesome, and heavy on adventure, JW harkens back to the big Hollywood "event" blockbusters of the 80s and 90s. Let's just not pretend this is anything groundbreaking. The fourth Jurassic Park movie remembers to have fun with its premise, but Spielberg's magic touch is still sorely missed.
Jurassic World is the latest film in the Jurassic Park franchise in name only. Call it a sequel, reboot, or re-quel, the fact remains, this is not the same world created by author Michael Crichton and made real by Spielberg and company in 1993. All the major characters from the first three films are gone. Alan Grant, Ellie Satler, Ian Malcolm, and the rest of the appealing and memorable characters of the earlier movies are replaced with broad movie archetypes and superfluous supporting characters. With respect to our new kid characters and Vincent D'Onofrio's bone-headed military grunt, the only two characters worth noting in Jurassic World are Owen Grady, a rugged dino-expert played by bona fide movie star Chris Pratt, and Claire Dearing, an uptight scientist played by Bryce Dallas-Howard. Both are really likable in doses, and the script doesn't subject us to too much of their dopey bantering. While Owen and Claire are cliched, and ultimately uninteresting, as characters, the charm and sheer star power of Pratt and Dallas-Howard are quite enough to bolster JW's brand of disposable summer adventuring.
There's a neat little hook to the story of Jurassic World. After a re-branding of sorts, John Hammond's dream is finally realized and Jurassic Park is opened and fully operating. However, when the public begins to lose interest in seeing the same old dinosaurs, the scientists of Jurassic World are prompted to create an all-new hybrid dinosaur called the Indominus Rex. Well, you guessed it, that dinosaur escapes. Okay, so that's a clever solution to the classic Jurassic Park sequel dilemma, "How does this stuff keep happening?", but that plot line takes all of twenty minutes to peter into a chase picture, and a simple one at that. The few subplots are banal. Be it, two brothers who come to Jurassic World to spend time with their aunt, or a ridiculous plan to weaponize velociraptors (The latter of those subplots is one of the most embarrassingly stupid ideas I've seen in a movie in years), Jurassic World doesn't have much to get invested in besides big scary monsters running after people.
There is one aspect of the film that I love, and that is the design of the Jurassic World Resort. The care that went into perfecting the look of the theme park is a great deal higher than the care that went into the story or the filmmaking. Jurassic World is a living, breathing place, and it is filled with all kinds of minor details that help sell the illusion. The triceratops petting zoo, the hamster ball ride, the souvenir shops, and scores of other theme park related details are touches that I was grateful made it into the film. There are more than a few nice moments where you get to enjoy the park as it was "intended". The immersion lasts throughout, even as the prehistoric psycho-killer, and all the destruction that it brings, takes center stage.
Once the Indominus Rex gets out, and all Hell breaks loose, director Colin Trevorrow's filmmaking starts to show its deficiencies. Jurassic World is an impressive technical feat. The action is staged well, and the special effects and production designs are incredibly polished. It all looks like a million bucks (or 150 million to be exact), and it's all very fun, but when it comes to the meat of the movie, it's foolish to think that Jurassic World is anything more than Transformers with dinosaurs. In Jurassic Park and The Lost World, Steven Spielberg infused his action scenes with tension and suspense. There was a certain kind of visual poetry to the T-Rex attack in the first movie or the raptors in the grass scene from The Lost World. They were exhilarating because of their selective restraint. Without showing everything, Spielberg made scenes that were subtle and scary, and that exploded to life at just the right moments. Jurassic World's action scenes are big, loud, and entertaining, but it's all chaos, no technique. Trevorrow throws the kitchen sink into every shot. The Indominus Rex chomps up dozens of machine gun toting mercenaries, pterodactyls dart all over the screen pecking and biting everything in sight, and big, lumbering CGI beasts fight each other and destroy every last peanut brittle building around them. Sound familiar? It's the kind of Call of Duty-esque sensory bombardment that can be loads of fun to watch while you're there but doesn't leave the lasting impact of truly great action.
So it is with Jurassic World. The movie is big, bright, and fun, with lots of action and good special effects. It pleases crowds. But as with most big budget crowd pleasers, it comes with dull characters, brain dead plotting and booming CGI overload. Jurassic World left me with the exact same feeling I got after seeing Jurassic Park 3. Both movies are serviceable summer romps, full of dino-action and great visual effects, but there is simply a noticeable dip in the quality of the production. Jurassic World successfully mines from the franchise name a good B-caliber FX spectacular. For dumb summer fun, it works. But there was a time when Jurassic Park aspired to more than dumb summer fun. Steven Spielberg's first two movies had class. They grappled with ideas, they were intelligent, they showcased real filmmaking, and they were genuinely thrilling. Jurassic World is colorful and entertaining, but let's be clear, when it's all said and done, nothing beats Spielberg.
74/100