Movie Review: JURASSIC WORLD

Returning to the park definitely harkens nostalgia, there’s no getting around that. Like many of you, I’m a fan of Jurassic Park. It worked on multiple levels like many of Spielberg’s films. The film was a defining moment of innovation – it was the first movie with a DTS soundtrack, which the infamous CD intro alone blew people away. Spielberg peppered the film with magic, suspense and a kid-like sense of wonder that solidified it in classic film history. Then, he made The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Even Spielberg couldn’t save that film and then Universal felt like they needed another JP film and that ended in complete boredom. Now 14 years later, Jurassic World is out but I’m starting to think Universal was listening to the bloodsucking lawyer.

Gray (Ty Simpkins) & Zach (Nick Robinson) – names I had to look up because that’s how memorable their names were – are brothers sent away to their Aunt Clare (Bryce Dallas Howard), who I believe is the park operations manager (again, I don’t remember her official title ever being spoken), to get to spend time with their aunt while Gray, the dino-nut, gets to attend the park of his dreams. Meanwhile, Claire has some important investors that she needs to sell a new asset/attraction to – I guess this never came around when scheduling the kids’ vacation – so she has to neglect the kids by passing them off to her assistant. The new asset is a genetically created, more than filling in the gaps of DNA code, “dinosaur” called Indominus Rex. As you can probably guess, since this is a new species created solely in the lab, the people playing God fucked up and misjudged nature – because it finds a way – and now they have this beast loose upon the forest surrounding the park.

After seeing Colin Trevorrow‘s previous film, Safety Not Guaranteed, which had charm and, dare I say, magic in it, I felt like this was the guy that could right the wrongs of the previous to franchise entries and give fans of Jurassic Park a worthy sequel while breathing new life into what was a dead franchise. Jurassic World, unfortunately, is one of those prime examples where you can feel a struggle between the writing teams. There were two writing teams which consisted of Trevorrow & Derek Connolly and Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (The Relic, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes). The script is pretty bad. There is no fixing it. When an audience feels like there are two different tones throughout the film, you know that something didn’t work out. While I can only assume who wrote what, I think I can confidently identify who wrote what. Trevorrow & Connolly’s side of the story is meta incorporation of dialogue with a slight peppering of wink-wink and commentary on branding when it comes to the exposure of family fun and expensive family vacations. Jaffa & Silver’s side is essentially the action portion of the film and including set pieces that don’t really work once you have seen the trailers & TV spots. I will say that the fact that Jaffa & Silver worked on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and that was one of my favorite films of last year, gives them a little bit of credibility but Jurassic World feels so damn boring and pedestrian that the action sequences feel like they are smothering what Trevorrow & Connolly really wanted to do with the film. Neither writing team seemed to identify with the kids at all and the film, at its core is about repairing a family bond. Chris Pratt‘s Owen & his Velociraptor posse are maybe the only thing that the audience can emotionally attach themselves to.

Overall, the film isn’t as horrible as I might be making it out to be. Jake Johnson is there to try and pick up the pieces with comic relief (seriously, the eBay shirt gag is great on so many levels) but he is underutilized like many of the characters in Jurassic World. I’m not probably going to be original here (as I’m sure many of the reviews will say it) but Jurassic World is definitely the best sequel but comparing it to the other two isn’t saying much. On a technical level what made Jurassic Park so magical was the seamless blending of CGI and advanced puppetry. There is one scene with a puppet and even that feels like they threw it in there to shush the nerds. The film is the definition of cinematic junk food. It will make you feel decent, it may even satisfy your appetite ever so slightly but when you look back, you question if it was a good decision in the first place. Also, the 3D here is garbage. Save your money and see it in 2D.