Roar power
JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION Cert 12A★★
In cinemas now
Have Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum’s dino doctors spent the last three decades in bubbles of amber? They look remarkably well-preserved in this disappointing Jurassic finale which reunites the cast of the last two films with the stars of the 1993 original.
Sadly, time hasn’t been kind to the dinosaurs. Movies have moved on since Spielberg wowed us with cutting-edge special effects back then, and director Colin Trevorrow’s decision to use retro animatronic dinosaurs in this latest outing is an asteroid-sized disaster.
Close up, the creaky dino-bots fail to summon – to paraphrase Goldblum’s doctor – the requisite oohs and aahs. And when the director does turn to CGI, his man-eating lizards look a few millennia behind the photorealistic stars of The Lion King remake.
But the convoluted plot is an even bigger problem. It’s now four years since the action of the previous film Fallen Kingdom, and the escaped dinosaurs have spread across the planet.
Biosyn, a not-at-all-sinistersounding biotech firm, has won a contract to experiment on captured dinos in a vast research facility in the Dolomite mountains.
When a plague of cat-sized locusts rampage across America, Laura Dern’s Dr Ellie Sattler connects them to dodgy goings-on at Biosyn, roping in Neill’s still-smitten Dr Alan Grant and Goldblum’s still-wisecracking Dr Ian Malcolm to help her investigate.
Meanwhile, the stars of the previous two instalments have their own issue with Biosyn. Since the last film, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) have been raising Maisie Lockwood (British actress Isabella Sermon) in a secluded log cabin. As the 14-year-old is the world’s first human clone, Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), Biosyn’s dodgy CEO, is desperate to get his mitts on her DNA.
When Maisie is kidnapped, Claire and Owen team up with dino-smuggler Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) to break into Biosyn’s HQ.
Goldblum ad-libs mildly amusing lines, it’s pacy, and there’s a moderately tense action scene involving a giant-clawed dino skittering across a frozen lake. But if the monsters were slicker and the plot made more sense, I probably wouldn’t have spent my time contemplating the hairlines of two veteran actors.
‘‘ Close up, the creaky dino bots fail to summon the requisite oohs and aahs