*** ½
out of ****
Often
I see movies that I thought would be bad but turned out to be pretty
good. Even more often I see movies I expect to be good and find they
are pretty bad. But once in a while I see a movie I expect to be
pretty good and find it to be far better than I expected. “Jurassic
World” is one of those.
Hard
to believe it's been 22 years since Steven Spielberg put the world on
its ear with the first film that fully realized the potential of CGI.
I remember going to see that movie 2 or 3 times in the summer of
1993 and being swept away by the visuals of seeing dinosaurs that
looked absolutely authentic on the screen. It didn't hurt that the
story was fantastic, the performances (particularly Jeff Goldblum)
were wildly entertaining and the tension and pace were neck-breaking. Now finally, after two really unimaginative sequels featuring members of the
original cast (“The Lost World” in 1997 and “Jurassic Park III”
in 2001) we have another film in the series that is worthy of the
wonderful original.
John
Hammond's dream of a dinosaur-based theme park has been fully realized, and
“Jurassic World” plays host to 20,000+ people at a time. They
have 22 'attractions' including T-rex and a sea monster called
Mosasaurus. Claire (Dallas Bryce Howard) is the park's operations
manager, and her two nephews Zach and Gray come to visit the park.
Grey is about 11 and wildly enthusiastic about seeing the park, while
Zach is a protypical 16 year old – he can barely look away from
his phone long enough to notice the T-rex....
But
Claire is a victim of the same type of thinking that Jeff Goldblum
warned us about in the original. Her lack of humility in the face of
nature is staggering. Apparently the world is bored with real
dinosaurs, so Jurassic World genetics experts have developed a hybrid
one that is bigger, smarter, more aggressive and “has more teeth”. This
hybrid creation is called Indominus Rex, and he's one scary bugger.
Smart enough to try to set traps for the humans and to figure out how
they are tracking him, with the added ability to camouflage himself
like a chameleon and change his body temperature to hide from heat
sensors. Pretty clever, except it's also a 50-foot killing
machine......
The
park also has a brilliant animal handler named Owen (Chris Pratt) who
makes a point of handling the dangerous animals with the utmost
respect. He is called in to assess the precautions they are taking
with Indominus Rex only to find it gone, presumably loose in the park
with 20,000 visitors, including Zach and Gray. What fun this
becomes.
Much
like the first in the Jurassic series (but unlike the previous
sequels) we are given a bunch of likable characters to root for here.
We're also given some stupid villains (inGen engineers hoping to
weaponize the Indominus) which we should also expect from this type
of story. But again like the original, the thrills are thrilling,
the scares are scary (if a little predictable) and you spend much of
the second half on the edge of your seat. Tremendously entertaining.
If I
were to complain about anything it would be the complete lack of
acknowledgment given the two previous sequels. This film refers to
John Hammond and the original Jurassic Park effort at some length,
but makes no reference to the disasters at Isla Sorna or the
ill-fated explorers to Isla Nublar in “Jurassic Park III”. The
characters in this film are worried about possibly being shut down if
anyone dies, but dozens of people died in those sequels and they
never discuss how they got licensed considering those additional deaths. I
suppose, much like the film “Rocky Balboa” where they ignore
Rocky's brain injuries discussed in the previous film, they decided
just to pretend it never happened.
That's
okay, if a bit puzzling, because of the final product. “Jurassic
World” is fantastic from start to finish, scary for the kids (if
they are the sensitive type – I took my 11 year old twins and they loved
it) but entertaining for everyone. Very highly recommended.
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