Check your fun at the door with prehistoric beasties

JURASSIC WORLD (2015)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

1993's "Jurassic Park" was a tremendous thrill ride of a movie, a literal walk in the park with dinosaurs - some friendly, some not so friendly. What also made the movie were the colorful characters, a motley crew of scientists who saw this park as a troubling future capitalist venture. I recall the chaos theory mathematician, Dr. Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), arguing about the ethics of bringing back dinosaurs to the late Richard Attenborough's Dr. Hammond - Sam Neill and Laura Dern were on hand as paleontologists who were in agreement with Malcolm. Granted, Michael Crichton's book was more in-depth and brutal but the original film had the humor and fright factor down pat. Sequels came and went, though Spielberg's own "The Lost World" was a decent flick with an ecological theme of preserving the dinos' habitat. The third film, the less said the better. This new "Jurassic World" has no real distinction or novelty and the surprise is that, though superior to the third film, it has little fright value and almost no sense of humor.

Jurassic World is the literal name of a fully functioning theme park with real, live dinosaurs. The theme park is on an island, Isla Nublar, the very same Costa Rican one from the first film. Bryce Dallas Howard is Claire Dearing who is on board this dino theme park as its operations manager, hungering to fulfill the audience's demands for bigger, louder dinosaurs! Apparently, she casually mentions a poll that people attending this park don't want the same old, same old. This might be the screenwriters' (five of them, this time) own ironic commentary on audiences that attend this movie - bigger and louder don't necessarily mean better. But these are real dinosaurs in the world of this movie - how much better can it be than to see creatures from a prehistoric time. Naturally, the genetics lab has bred a new kind of dinosaur, part raptor and part T-Rex, called the Indominus Rex. It is a ferocious 50-foot creature that is smarter than most humans. The raptors are also smarter and quicker yet they can be tamed, thanks to Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) who is capable of holding them at bay.

Naturally, things go awry at Jurassic World. Indominus Rex runs loose around the park, and has camouflaging capabilities. Pterosaurs break free and fly from their own domed enclosure, snatching up the park's customers and flinging them in the air. There is also a Mosasaurus, an aquatic prehistoric lizard that eats a shark for the spectators, sort of a bloodthirsty take on the Orca. Interestingly, there is not as much dino action as you might think. We are mostly saddled with Chris Pratt's rather bland heroic gestures and his zero rapport with Bryce Dallas Howard - both deserve better scripts. There are secondary and tertiary characters introduced who give us a little background and off they go before some get chomped by raptors and such. The most fascinating character is Vincent D'Onofrio as Vic Hoskins, the villainous head of security operations who was hoping for the shite to hit the fan. Why? Military applications of raptors in a time of war, that is why. Sadly, his character's own dinos-in-the-military ideas are never explained. When one scene shows the terror of these Pterosaurs wrecking havoc, all he can do is stand back and smile. Huh? B.D. Wong is also back, the only returnee from the original "Jurassic Park" series, as the geneticist who has conspired to create a monster with "more teeth." Also on board for dino bait are Claire's nephews who mistakenly travel in a gyrosphere (a sphere-shaped ride on wheels) through the thick of the jungle despite the red alerts.

The main flaw is that director Colin Trevorrow (who is no Steven Spielberg) doesn't offer much in the way of suspense or genuine thrills, even for a silly monster movie. The movie coasts along but it has no real momentum and no sequence is ever shaped well enough to induce the heebie-jeebies. Spielberg could craft one of these in his sleep but he also gave you goosebumps and real terror. Not one scene in this film comes a tenth close to the T-Rex rampage from the original. Pauline Kael once said it best about Spielberg - "Great Spielberg action is so brilliant it spooks you." "Jurassic World" doesn't have enough jeopardy, inspire much awe or wonder, and has no real moral dilemmas about the existence of a theme park even on the most rudimentary level - basically no real ideas at all. It is not just a movie where you check your brain at the door. It is a check-your-fun-at-the-door type movie too.