Life, Uh...

Year: 2018

Director: J. A. Bayona

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall

Run Time: 2 hours 8 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies in the history of cinema, so I don't know whether that makes it shocking or completely understandable that I felt no interest in checking out Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The fifth entry in the long-running blockbuster franchise is about as far from that original film as you can get while still being about CGI dinosaurs. Jurassic Park has more in common with When Harry Met Sally than Fallen Kingdom.

Approach with caution.

So, Fallen Kingdom picks up several years after Jurassic World. Dinosaurs are living in peace on Isla Nublar following the destruction of the theme park, but a volcanic eruption threatens their survival. Dinosaur rights activist Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and velociraptor trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) are sent to the island on a rescue mission by Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), a proxy for John Hammond's former business partner Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell). Because you can never trust the rich, in real life and especially the movies, this trip may not be as kosher as it seems.

Along for the ride are sharp-tongued paleobiologist Zia (Daniella Pineda) and wimpy tech dweeb Franklin (Justice Smith), as well as what the movie paints as years of emotional baggage and sexual tension between Owen and Claire, even though it's just thin air. Also there's a little girl (Isabella Sermon) running around, because what's a Jurassic Park movie without an unnecessary child character?

Better.

Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom is a phenomenally dumb movie that takes the franchise in a phenomenally dumb direction that paints future Jurassic directors into a corner, forcing them to make a phenomenally dumb movie as well, whenever that should come down the pike. It's so dumb that its dumbness is literally infecting the future. Its dumbness has slipped out of the timestream, and not even Doctor Who can stop it.

Sometimes this dumbness is used to its advantage, like how every shot of Claire begins at her sensible shoes and pans up, throwing a hilariously overbearing number of winks at the "high heels in the jungle" controversy. Mostly it is used to its detriment, like the rapidly fluctuating number of guards around at any given time when our heroes need to sneak around the bad guy's lair that totally diminish any tension or stakes because they're never around when plot stuff needs to happen. 

Sometimes Fallen Kingdom hits the bad-good strides I was hoping for, including a sterling moment where Bryce Dallas Howard shrieks the word "Chair!" with a hurricane-blast of emotion like she was gunning for that clip to end up on her Oscar reel. In fact, she's frequently too good for the material, but in the completely wrong direction, turning random lines into scenery-obliterating grenades of diva drama that would make Gone with the Wind blush. 

"These raptors will never be hungry again!"

While Howard is busy either giving the best or the worst performance in the movie, the rest of the cast just flounders around, drowning in a sea of unmotivated decision-making, inscrutable dialogue, and CGI mayhem. Chris Pratt seems devoted to being as bland a male cypher as possible, and a heap of character actors dawdle around the edges with nothing in particular to do. And don't get me started on Jeff Goldblum, who I don't particularly like on a good day, and who is positively catatonic in his one-scene cameo.

The only person who seems to have actually showed up to work is J. A. Bayona, who directs the crap out of the movie. Not out of the actors, mind you. But as far as the imagery goes, Bayona is the second best director to ever touch one of these movies. His composition of light and shadow is frequently exquisite, especially in the bizarre turn the film takes toward gothic mansion horror in the third act. He directs the movie like a German expressionist masterpiece, only instead of using the implication to drive the horror, you also get to see a whole lot of CGI dino-monster.

If this were any other movie, I'd call that the best of both worlds. But Fallen Kingdom isn't the best of anything. Bayona really is working it (to the extent that I'd even recommend seeing this movie, just to bask in the way he captures the feeling of majesty and awe that Spielberg so capably honed in the original film), but it's still a dumb, milquetoast popcorn epic that doesn't have a lot to offer in terms of narrative, character, acting, fun, or much of anything a person would come to this movie for.

I mean, I came for the visual references to Nosferatu, but I ain't your average bear.

Oh, and the score isn't even good. John Williams' iconic themes are mostly shelved in favor of a bizarre choral piece that shrieks in your face how big and important every scene in the movie is. It's the movie in a nutshell: Fallen Kingdom tries very hard to be a lot of different things, and it fails in a lot of spectacular ways. The things that work really work, but if you made a list of those things, it would fit on a Post-It note.

TL;DR: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a bland nothing of a popcorn flick, although its director clearly has his head in the game.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 916
Reviews In This Series
Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1997)
Jurassic Park III (Johnston, 2001)
Jurassic World (Trevorrow, 2015)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Bayona, 2018)

Raptor Buddies

Year: 2015

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty Simpkins

Run Time: 2 hour 4 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Jurassic World is not a better popcorn movie than Jurassic Park. But to be fair, I can list the number of popcorn movies better than Jurassic Park on a Post-It. With room to spare. But as a peer to this summer's Mad Max: Fury Road, which is also a decades-later followup to an inordinately successful trilogy, I can comfortably say we're two for two in fourth sequels that aren't total garbage wastes of time. 

Mind you, Mad Max is a luminescent, damn near perfect masterpiece of balls-to-the-wall action that challenges the very notion of what cinema can be and Jurassic World merely isn't quite as dumb as Jurassic Park III. We're measuring on vastly different scales here, but two successful franchise continuations in the new Millennium? For Hollywood, this is like Christmas.

Though I daresay Santa's reindeer have slightly fewer teeth.

Jurassic World is a direct sequel to Jurassic Park, depicting the successful application of John Hammond's dream to create a fully functioning theme park with genetically modified, de-extinct dinosaurs. Run by the eccentric billionaire Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan), Jurassic World is now a well-oiled machine attended by thousands of happy tourists a day. Hoewver, as time has passed, children have become immune to the technical wizardry of the past. They long for bigger, better, more exciting adventures, and Jurassic World is prepared to give it to them. The park, that is. The movie is content to slop a bucket of CGI onto the screen and call it a night. But I digress.

Headed by the emotionless businesswoman Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), the park has been developing a new attraction designed by the noteworthy scientist Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong, the only returning cast member from the original film). Called the Indominus Rex, this massive creature has been designed to be scarier, deadlier, and larger than any creature the park has ever attempted before. Evidently they failed on that front, because we learn from a too-early reveal (and a quick scan of any nearby Toys R Us shelves) that the creature is pretty much just a kinda tall, albino T-Rex. Wheeeee.

Needless to say, the highly intelligent animal escapes, putting Claire's nephews - surly teen Zach (Nick Robinson) and his wide-eyed younger brother Gray (Ty Simpkins of Insidious) - and the entire park at risk. Together with the gruff raptor trainer Owen (Chris Pratt), they must work to bring the theme park back from the brink of total disaster, butting heads along the way with Hoskins (Vincent D'Onofrio), a militaristic meathead who wants to use the raptors to bring down the beast in order to prove their viability as military weaponry.

As you can probably tell, Jurassic World has a bit too much on its mind, and that's without even mentioning the subplot about Lowery (Jake Johnson), the comic relief control panel worker, or the ongoing divorce proceedings of the kids' parents, Karen (Judy Greer) and Scott (Andy Buckley).

Trying to keep track of them all is like trying to keep four raptors from biting your pretty hands off.

Jurassic World has too many plates spinning in the air, which prevent it from ever truly realizing its full potential. 

The first plate to wobble and crash to the floor is its characters. There's too many of them drifting on and off the screen to really find a hero to root for, only two of them have any semblance of an arc (Claire, who seems to be the protagonist, if only because she happens to be onscreen the most and her costume design actively reflects her transition, is the first; the second is Zach, who goes from being a surly teen to a less surly teen, so let's not dust off our Oscar shelves just yet), and the rest are shallow ciphers: Hoskins is a picture of avaricious evil, Gray is the whiz kid, Owen is the badass knight in shining armor, and so on.

The emotional impact of the storyline lacks sinew thanks to the protagonists' lack of inner life, and many of the broad strokes masquerading as character development only weakly prop up the cardboard cutouts populating its world. The parents' divorce adds next to nothing to the film (save about 5 more minutes of screen time), and the awkward, forced romance between Owen and Claire is about as credible as the McDonalds "Healthy Choices" menu.

Just look at that crackling chemistry. You can feel the heat from here.

The second, and largest, plate to fall is the special effects. CGI graphics are improving as time goes on, and nothing here is quite as egregious as the weightless copy-and-paste construction robots in Tomorrowland, but the fact remains that Jurassic Park was a success thanks to its conscientious use of computer graphics. Instead of using computers to augment and aid practical effects, Jurassic World  liberally - and lazily - slathers the film with pixel grotesqueries. 

The only abominably unconvincing dinos are the T-Rex and occasionally the raptors, but there is no lasting spectacle to be found in Jurassic World. Chockablock with flat, obtrusive CGI that lingers even in the furthest corners of the film (Really - A gate? A bird? You're telling me there's no birds pecking around the windowsills at Amblin that you could grab?), even the most convincing visuals lack impact thanks to their remarkably spotty brethren.

When you set uninspiring CGI monsters against a cadre of dull stereotypes, all running around the island madly bumping into one another, it becomes extremely difficult to muster up any cobwebs of suspense.

I mean, look at this. I'm pretty sure I played this computer game in third grade.

The third and final plate is the script. Along with a complex tunnel system of plot/logic holes, nearly every decision made by any human is the worst possible outcome for whatever situation it happens to be. I of all people am willing to accept some gaps in logic from dumb characters in suspense movies, but many key moments (and nearly every aspect of the "release the raptors" subplot) are idiotic and, worst of all, generic.

It would be one thing if the flaws in the story were in service of unparalleled action and suspense, but for the most part they form a loud background hum to one of the most hideously cliché adventure movie beats in years. Bad government, mad science, wan romance, and blockbuster drama collide in Jurassic World, careening pointlessly in all directions. The film is self-important in the worst way, packed to the gills with Important Lines that characters say while staring off into space. In fact, I don't think a single shot exists in the first act, where Chris Pratt doesn't saunter into frame (even if he's already in the middle of a conversation) to say something Badass and Insightful.

Chuck in a production team that somehow thinks it's appropriate to resurrect John Williams' classic theme when the characters are riding an escalator and you've got yourself a bit of a mess on your hands.

Nothing a good barber can't fix.

OK, are we done complaining? Good. Because, in spite of its ample flaws, Jurassic World is still a fun, dumb summer flick. The shadow of Jurassic Park is a terrifyingly tough one to escape, and of course this film - with its supremely rickety foundation - does not manage it. But it does manage to scrape together a pretty decent thrill ride for the new generation of dino lovers.

There's a negligible amount of genuinely effective suspense in this film thanks to its thin characters, but more than a couple scenes have moments that startle the senses into something above complacency. Likewise, there are a handful of comic relief moments that strike gold and have the capacity to elicit actual, bona fide peals of laughter. The rest of the film coasts on effects-filled action and, when it gets a chance to abandon its pretenses at telling an authentically human story, it does not disappoint.

Jake Johnson is funny as always, and Bryce Dallas Howard is more effective than the trailer gives her credit for, but the real conflict comes with Chris Pratt. He does more than enough to prove himself as a viable candidate for future non-comedic roles, but Owen gives him absolutely nothing to work with. He's awash in the contradictory pages of the script, relying only on his natural charm to get the point across rather than any act of true character creation.

It's shallow and it's messy, but it's still a good time at the movies. Maybe the rampaging dinos don't have they heart they used to. Maybe the humans they tread upon fall short of interesting. But as a slick, surface level thrill ride, Jurassic World does its job. No more and no less than that, but it's something I don't dread seeing again.

TL;DR: Jurassic World is a totally fine popcorn movie, all things considered.

Rating: 6/10

Should I Spend Money On This? I ain't gonna stop ya.

Word Count: 1514

Reviews In This Series

Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993)

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1997)

Jurassic Park III (Johnston, 2001)

Jurassic World (Trevorrow, 2015)

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Bayona, 2018)