‘Jurassic World’ stubs its toe
Special effects in fifth iteration of dinosaur saga fail to overcome hackneyed script
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Make America Jurassic Again. It’s technically Central not North America, but let’s not quibble.
When will they learn? In “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” — the fifth in its film franchise — the dino handlers have gained nothing from past mistakes. Intro to Dinosaurs 101 teaches you they’re like the chicks people buy at Easter or the 3-inch baby alligators tourists bring home from Florida: So adorable when they’re little, so problematic when they grow up. The same can be said of human children, of course: Soon enough, their creators tire of them and let them loose (or they let themselves loose) to wreak havoc among the rest of us.
When a cute yellow peep turns into a screeching rooster that wakes you at dawn, it’s annoying but not life-threatening. Those 3-inch ‘gators get 8 feet long when released outside but tend to keep to themselves, aside from the odd one or two that pop out of your toilet. And no matter how rotten your human kids turn out, they don’t often stomp you to death — by accident.
But don’t tell that to Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), those bleeding-heart, extinctanimal rights activists. Several years after the Jurassic theme park off the coast of Costa Rica has been abandoned, a mercenary team arrives to retrieve DNA from the remains of a T-Rex at the bottom of a lagoon. But they’re attacked by a Mosasaurus and, in their hasty retreat, the lagoon gate is left open, letting Mossy escape into the ocean — just as the island’s dormant volcano roars back to life.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate is somberly debating what to do. Do the surviving dinosaurs there deserve the same protection as other endangered species? Expert Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) says “No” — let ’em die. Nature is just correcting the mistake of cloning them in the first place.
Claire begs to differ. She’ll join Lockwood (James Cromwell), co-creator of dino-cloning technology, to move the critters to a new island sanctuary free from human interference — aided by Owen in locating sweet Blue, the last female Velociraptor, with whom Owen deeply bonded.
The uninspired script by Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow recycles the usual conflict between good-and-badguy scientists, government agents and private profiteers. Yet it’s more timely than they could’ve known. What to do with runaway Blue, once you catch her?
Lock her up! Along with the other
poor dinos in their cages, separated from their kids and parents! Suffice to say, they’re royally peeved with their mistreatment.
Claire and Owen wind up at Lockwood’s grand California estate, which makes the Hearst Castle at San Simeon look like a trailer park. There (or somewhere), evil auctioneer Eversol (Toby Jones) is selling off the captive dinosaurs, including a dangerously ill-tempered new hybrid, who’ll be chasing people up and down the mansion’s Gothic spiral staircases.
Who’s gonna make it and who’s gonna be dino dinner?
Don’t worry too much. Typically, they only eat the bad guys.
Spanish director J.A. Bayona has several fine previous entries to his credit, including “A Monster Calls” (2016), an enchanting coming-of-age fable about a boy and a tree monster, and “The Impossible” (2012), an epic re-creation of the catastrophic 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which earned Naomi Watts a best actress Oscar nod. He makes terrific use of his Oahu and Koolauloa Hawaiian locations here — nothing if not timely, with images of lava rivers fresh in everyone’s mind.
Much less fresh are the digital animatronic special effects. They’re no less impressive than in the four previous “Jurassic” iterations, but they can’t recapture the joyous novelty of seeing “live” dinos for the first time. It’s like seeing a sequel to “E.T.,” long after he’s been tamed and housebroken by the Reese’s Pieces: By now, we’re more fond than frightened or amazed.
Performances? The leads are all OK, nothing more. Wonderful Geraldine Chaplin is wasted; she’d have to be carbon-dated to be exact, but I’d say by looking at her that she’s just slightly younger than the dinosaurs. (She’s also the butt of a topical “nasty woman” joke.) Mr. Goldblum, spouting his character’s usual ponderous chaos theory et al. sci-fi gibberish, is forgettable.
FYI: Michael Crichton wrote the original novel, in part, out of concern for the rise of scientism and the exploration of biogenetics for profit.
Oh, well. The book and films continue to generate mega interest in the study of paleontology, which is much more than you can say for the endless ( and largely mindless) comic book superhero flicks.
As for me? (Thank you for asking.) They’ve done great new work refurbishing and upgrading Carnegie Museum’s world-class dino exhibits, but I still miss the terrifying T-rex mural that scared the beejesus out of me as a child.
I don’t care how accurate or inaccurate it was.