FILM OF THE WEEK
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Cert: 12A; Now showing
Can it really be 25 years since Steven Spielberg mopped-up on a gargantuan scale by way of a Michael Crichton sci-fi novel and cutting-edge CGI dinosaurs?
Jurassic Park made stupid amounts of money (not least in the merchandise stores) and in doing so extinguished any thoughts of the brand and its warmedup fossils ever succumbing to a studio-boss meteor strike.
As we come to this fifth outing in the long-exhausted franchise, we see firmly established formula tropes also dodging extinction; tampering humans asking for trouble; huge lizards going out of their way to chomp man, woman and child; T-Rex having the last laugh.
This, however, is no longer enough for the bloated expectations of today’s juvenile popcorn-guzzler, thus the writing team of Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow once again tack on a yawnsome new variable to this second Jurassic World instalment — a GM dinosaur!
Yes, it is with a heavy heart we report that your average tyrannosaur no longer cuts it when it comes to watching dogooders Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt flee in terror.
They’re up against dastardly Rafe Spall who is out to weaponise the beasts through genetic tweaking and auction them off to a room of oligarchs along with other dinosaurs poached from volcanowrought Isla Nublar.
Fresh from the test tube is the “Indoraptor”, a suped-up velociraptor on display in a predictably flimsy cage.
Director J.A. Bayona (whose previous credits include The Impossible, A Monster Calls) improves on the gaudy 2015 outing with smidges of subtlety and a darker horror tone at odds with Spielberg’s original funfair ride. Jeff Goldblum and Toby Jones turn up in the cast, which is never a bad thing.
And yet, the pervading sensation is unfortunately one of a film brand trapped within its own blueprint and unable to evolve.