Uh-ho. Pter-rible danger lurks
It’s nice to see old faces together again, but the overlong ‘Jurassic World Dominion’ falls short of veloci-rapture.
“This isn’t about us.” The words arrive late — much too late — into “Jurassic World Dominion,” an underimagined, overlong goodbye to this phase, at least, of a blockbuster franchise that’s overdue for extinction. The speaker is making an obvious point (it’s about the dinosaurs, stupid), but also, in context, a pretty disingenuous one.
Once upon a Michael Crichton-loving epoch — exactly 29 summers ago, when Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” conquered the box office — these giant prehistoric reptiles effortlessly stirred our collective awe, terror and wonderment.
But those days now feel as distant as the Late Cretaceous epoch, and this sixth series installment, ostensibly another Mother Nature cautionary tale, feels awfully human-centric and humandriven. For better and for worse, it is about us.
What this means, practically speaking, is that you’ll spend much of the movie’s 147-minute running time watching seven or eight coprotagonists running around another mad scientist’s dinosaur farm, where bioethical boundaries are once again crossed and security measures are once again doomed to fail.
Chris Pratt is back as that genial raptor whisperer Owen Grady, as is Bryce Dallas Howard as his dino rights-defending better half, Claire. The more exciting news, if you can call it news, is that Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum are reunited for the first time since 1993’s “Jurassic Park” — a fan-service coup that almost compensates for the dim reality of how little they’ve been given to do.
From a narrative stand
Rating: PG-13, for intense sequences of action, some violence and language Running time: 2 hours, 27 minutes Playing: Opens Friday in general release