Dinosaurs! The appeal of seeing prehistorical monsters lumber around has been the central hook in every movie with "Jurassic" in the title no matter what well-meaning Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum fans would have you believe. Humans in these movies are there to act stupid, look astonished, and occasionally get eaten: the big problem with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is that we don't get anywhere near enough of that last one.
It’s been
three years since the Jurassic World theme park on Isla Nublar was trashed, and
now an erupting volcano on the island looks set to finish the job. While the US
government dithers, Sir Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) and his aide Eli
Mils (Rafe Spall) hire Claire Dearling (Bryce Dallas Howard) to help retrieve
the dinos and transfer them to an all-new island. You don't remember Lockwood? He was the partner of the first film's John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), only they had a massive falling out thirty seconds before that film began and nobody ever mentioned him until now.
(what's even sillier is that there's no reason at all for his character to have any link at all to the original park - he could just be any old rich dinosaur nut. Well, except for one dangling plot point that most likely will be totally ignored in the next film, but who cares about things like that. Remember: Dinosaurs!)
Catching the big prize - super-intelligent
velociraptor Blue - will be tricky though: enter his former trainer (and Claire’s
ex) hunky house builder Owen Grady (Chris Pratt). But even he’s not prepared for what they’re going
to have to deal with... okay, it's a volcano. And a ridiculous (in a good way) tear-jerking scene where a giant dinosaur is tragically left behind on a dock while the last ship off the island sails away. Dinosaurs!
The Jurassic
films have always been slightly more kid-friendly than your average
blockbuster, and director J.A. Bayona delivers plenty of gripping set-pieces,
from fleeing the aforementioned exploding volcano to cat-and-mouse games where the cat is a
dinosaur that’s been created to be the most evil dinosaur ever - it's surprising they don't mention they threw in a bit of Hitler DNA, it's so evil. The scenes between the set pieces aren't exactly classics, but you do get a bunch of highly trained mercenaries failing to spot a literal flying truck and Toby Jones playing a professional auctioneer who takes bids for something that isn't even on sale, so it's a win-win.
If there's a problem with this dino porn, it's that not enough humans get eaten. Grady is a hunky hero, Dearling is (too often)
a damsel in distress and everyone else really should end up as a chew toy. But clearly the technology that enables humans to clone dinosaurs has also enabled humans to live without blood, so even the one actual chomping scene features no red stuff. But there is a literal dinosaur fashion parade at one point, so it's hardly all bad news. Dinosaurs!
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