The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Lacking a fine touch
‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ has the big-dinosaur thrills — and the dumb characters — you expect
Giving movie audiences richly drawn and extremely compelling characters has never been the forte of the “Jurassic Park” franchise. ¶ More or less, it’s always been, “Come for the giant computer-generated dinosaurs, tolerate the itty-bitty humans the dinosaurs are trying to eat.” ¶ That not-so-proud tradition continues with the fifth film, “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” the sequel to 2015 megahit “Jurassic World,” which reignited the franchise even if doing so in completely formulaic fashion.
While roughly on par with its predecessor, “Fallen Kingdom” feels less fresh than the other did, if only because “Jurassic World” had the benefit of coming almost a decade after 2001’s reasonably entertaining “Jurassic Park III.”
On the one hand, “Fallen Kingdom” gets an upgrade in the director’s chair, with J.A. Bayona (“The Impossible”) taking over for Colin Trevorrow, and the movie makes a bit better use of its comically gifted star, Chris Pratt (“The Guardians of the Galaxy” movies). On the other hand, the script — by Trevorrow and one of his “Jurassic World” co-writers, Derek Connolly — is chock full of cartoonish characters, many of whom regularly make wildly poor decisions, and uninspired plot developments. Come for the dinosaurs, tolerate the idiots. “Fallen Kingdom” picks up about three years and $800 million in lawsuit payments after the events of “Jurassic World,” with many dinosaurs remaining on Isla Nublar.
The island’s long dormant volcano is becoming active, and the man-resurrected creatures may be gazing into the void of extinction once again.
Some in the global community believe it is best for humanity to let the dinosaurs perish. Counted among those voices is our old friend, chaos theorist Dr. Ian Malcolm — Jeff Goldblum briefly reprising his role from the first two “Jurassic Park” films and giving “Fallen Kingdom” an early boost with a scenery-chewing speech about man continuing to bring his own end closer by messing with nature.
On the other end of the spectrum is “Jurassic World” heroine Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), who since we last saw her has created the Dinosaur Protection Group and badly wants to find a way to save the massive creatures.
That mechanism to do just that is presented to her when she is called to the estate of wealthy but sickly entrepreneur Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell). Although previously never seen, Lockwood, we learn, long ago was the partner of Dr. John Hammond (the late Richard Attenborough) in creating Jurassic Park. (Wow, isn’t that convenient for storytelling purposes?) He tells Claire a sanctuary has been prepared for the dinosaurs. It is to be void of tourists and absolutely will not become a theme park. More than anything, he says, the dinos need the absence of humans to thrive.
The point man for this effort is Lockwood’s young right-hand man, Eli Mills (Rafe Spall of “Prometheus” and “The Big Short”), who convinces her they will also need the help of Owen Grady (Pratt), who since a breakup with Claire has focused his energies on building a cabin and being left alone. Owen had shown a gift for communicating with a group of young velociraptors, including the now-grown Blue. For reasons that will become clear, Lockwood’s group — which includes island mission leader Wheatley (Ted Levine of “Shutter Island”), a tough mercenary — very much wants to recover Blue.
In its first third or so, “Fallen Kingdom” plays like a disaster film, with humans and dinos alike fleeing from spewing and flowing lava. One of the film’s best sequences has all the species jumping off a cliff into the ocean, with some nice filmmaking being done underwater as Owen works to save Claire.
“Fallen Kingdom” then shifts to more traditional monster-movie movie mode, with the humans in ever-increasing danger of being eaten, stomped on or otherwise decimated by their bigger, hard-charging counterparts.
The real villains, of course, are greedy humans, those who would try to make beastly profits off these animals and the DNA manipulation that brings them to life. That said, every character — including Lockwood’s dino-loving granddaughter, Maisie (newcomer Isabella Sermon) — will have to deal with the mayhem-making hybrid of a velociraptor and the big dino from “Jurassic World,” the Indominus rex. Simply put, this thing is fast, fierce and not at all friendly. After all, it’s been bred to be a weapon.
The always enjoyable Pratt is solid in “Fallen Kingdom” — he gets a few nice laughs — but his Owen continues to be underwritten. Worse, there’s still little interesting about Howard’s Claire, as written and performed.
Trevorrow and Connolly — who first collaborated on the quirky-fun 2012 scifi comedy directed by the former, “Safety Not Guaranteed” — try to juice things up with a couple of new side characters, the DPG’s capable dinosaur expert Dr. Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda of TBS comedy series “The Detour”) and fraidy-cat computer wiz Franklin Webb (Justice Smith of “The Get Down”), but neither moves the needle much.
Ultimately, “Fallen Kingdom” just feels so “Jurassic”-ally familiar, even with the talented Bayona — who also made acclaimed 2007 horror film “The Orphanage” and the underrated 2016 fantasy drama “A Monster Calls” — behind the camera. As with Trevorrow before him, he seems more concerned with delivering the bill-paying suits at Universal Pictures exactly what they want instead of bringing any kind of artistic touch to the affair.
To be fair to Bayona, there are numerous well-executed moments of tension and some fun thrills, but they’re countered by several stretches that are almost exhaustingly ordinary.
A third “World” already has been announced for 2021, so it shouldn’t be giving away much that “Fallen Kingdom” offers less of an ending than a setup for what’s to come.
Who knows? Maybe the next film will offer terrific characters to go along with the dinosaurs. Probably the best we can hope for, though, is a bigger part for Goldblum.