UniversalMore than two decades after everything at Jurassic Park went awry on the remote island of Isla Nublar, the dino-themed Jurassic World theme park and resort has sprouted up in its place. That’s where we meet fifteen-year-old Zach (Nick Robinson) and his dinosaur-loving little brother, Gray (Ty Simpkins), whose moronic parents apparently thought it’d be a swell gift to send their sons to a third-world country where enormous man-eating reptiles roam free.
Perhaps I’m being a little harsh. They really won’ t be alone. Zach and Gray’s aunt, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), who pretty much runs the island, will hang out with them. Never mind that the kids haven’t seen their aunt in years, Claire has a fractured relationship with their mom, and mom hasn’t been able to get Claire on the phone in the days leading up to the trip. It’ll be fine.
Meanwhile on Isla Nublar, Claire is about to show the resort’s billionaire owner, Masrani (Irrfan Kahn), Jurassic World’s newest “asset” — the genetically-engineered Indominus Rex, or I-Rex: part T-Rex, part lack of imagination. It’s a hostile behemoth that’s already cracked the unbreakable glass designed to contain it. So Masrani demands Claire bring in Velociraptor handler Owen, a svelte Chris Pratt, who sports a Clark Gable mustache and looks as if he borrowed his wardrobe from a Bruce Springsteen video circa 1984.
I probably don’t need to tell you — surprise! — the I-Rex gets loose. Zach and Gray are in danger! Owen tells Claire “I told you so!” And so on.
Jurassic World is more unintentionally funny than it is frightening. For example, Verizon is going to sponsor the I-Rex and Samsung sponsors a pavilion on the island. So of course, it’s hilarious when two characters in danger need to use their mobile phones, but a weak signal prevents them from receiving potentially life-saving information. If that humor was intentional, then the filmmakers brilliantly trolled Samsung and Verizon, but I just don’t think that’s the case.
Fundamentally, Jurassic World is built on a flawed premise. Claire feels the monstrous I-Rex is necessary because traveling to Central America to hang out with ordinary, living, breathing dinosaurs just isn’t exciting enough. That flawed logic ironically spotlights the movie’s biggest problem: the assumption that in the years since 2001’s Jurassic Park III, we’ve grown bored with big-budget movie franchises, remakes, retakes and reboots. Recent movie hits clearly prove that’s not the case. Even so, the Jurassic World filmmakers have gone over the top to give us essentially a big-budget, well-acted version of Sharknado, the intentionally B-grade Syfy TV movie series about giant sharks falling from the sky and eating people.
Does it matter that Jurassic World is a self-referential story with little imagination and even less heart, that it defies logic and practically makes fun of the audience? Original summer blockbusters have themselves gone the way of the dinosaur and Jurassic World, along with everybody who’s going to profit from it, is happy to exploit a movie-going public that itself will be more than happy to fork over hard-earned cash for what is at best mediocre entertainment.
Two-and-half out of five stars.
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