Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

June 27, 2018 at 8:46 am | Posted in 2018 | Leave a comment
Tags: Action Film, Adventure, BD Wong, Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Daniella Pineda, James Cromwell, Jeff Goldblum, Justice Smith, Movie Review, Rafe Spall, Toby Jones

½

Jeez! Why do I do this to myself? I mean, I know it’s going to be bad, but, like an accident, I just can’t look away. I still vividly remember seeing the first “Jurassic Park” in the theaters, and the sheer sense of wonder I experienced. That diminished rapidly over the next couple of films and I stopped bothering a long time ago. You would have thought I had learned my lesson. Apparently, I have not. The plot of “Fallen Kingdom” is only tangentially worth covering, as its entire purpose is to set up sequels. So, I’ll cover that at the end. In this current rebooting of the franchise, we have replaced a thoughful, intellectual scientist (Sam Neill) with a hunky, wise-cracking, emotionally-stunted raptor-whisperer (!), played with absolutely no charm by Chris Pratt. Pratt is at his best when he can ad-lib his particular brand of snarky/goofy/endearing humor. Here, he is given very little to do other than frown and run. Any dumb action-jock could have taken this role. Admittedly, Pratt has yet to do anything that required any real depth of acting (“Guardians of the Galaxy?” “The Lego Movie?”). Maybe the upcoming “Cowboy Ninja Viking” will be a sensitive and complex drama. That’s not to say I don’t like the characters he typically plays. I think his performances are genuinely funny and endearing in a goofy way. What I am saying is that, wasted as he was in this film, he was far less wasted than an actually talented dramatic actor like Bryce Dallas Howard. I have seen her play interesting, layered characters (think of her in “50/50” or “The Help”). Yet, here all she seems good for is hopeless screaming and panic. Her character was such a damsel, I felt like I was watching an 80s movie. Laura Dern’s “Ellie” from 25 years ago was more interesting than this character. And then there was James Cromwell, with the most inexplicably waxing and waning British accent I have heard since “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” What was even the point of his character? He just sat around in bed for a few scenes. He seemed to exist only to provide an excuse for the existence of a child. Every bad Jurassic movie needs a child in distress. Lucky for the viewers, this film has one. And, just to pile on while I am piling on, director J.A. Bayona (who directed the really powerful “The Impossible”), seems utterly enamored with a recurring dinosaur-as-shadow-puppet motif. He came up with every creative way he could to show us a silhouetted dino caught briefly by lightening/car lights/whatever, blinking in and out of sight behind some unsuspecting character. Once, it was cool. Twice, it was fine. Three times? Four times? I mean, really? It just became a laughable drinking game (when will Bayona do it again?). By the end, the already laughably bad loosely-correlated action sequences had become exhausting to sit through. Could everyone just die already? But they don’t. Because their has to be a sequel. Speaking of which, the one possibly bright light at the end of this torturous tunnel is the way the film is book-ended by Jeff Goldblum reviving his Ian Malcolm. He portends a new dinosaur inhabited world. If the next film can bring dinosaurs into cities, make them part of a new, frightening ecosystem, then maybe there is potential.  If they can shift the tone away from action-adventure to suspense and horror, even better. And, better yet, if they can get rid of everyone and bring back Ian Malcolm… well, that might be a movie I could actually recommend.