Review: JURASSIC WORLD is Exactly the Movie You Thought it Would Be

Just so we are clear, JURASSIC WORLD is everything that you would expect from a movie about a theme park built around real, live genetically engineered dinosaurs; especially in a world where it's not the first park of its kind. As you may recall, starting in the 1990s, there was an ill-fated incarnation known as JURASSIC PARK, which didn't end badly enough to dissuade anyone from trying again (either on or off screen). Needless to say, things don't exactly go well this time around either. If your credulity is not strained enough by the film's basic conceits, the minutia of JURASSIC WORLD will surely finish the job. The franchise's cliché fourth film has all of the hackneyed hallmarks you have grown to love and loathe in a summer blockbuster; a man vs. beast action movie that requires the suspension of every available ounce of disbelief, but is ultimately satisfyingly entertaining; either despite, or because of, its ridiculousness.

JURASSIC WORLD, which opens nationwide today, stars Chris Pratt as a former Navy man Owen Grady, who now trains velociraptors (cause that's a thing). Chris Pratt is essentially playing Chris Pratt here, or at least the action-adventure version America has grown to love. Bryce Dallas Howard co-stars as Claire Dearing, Jurassic World's Operations Manager. Not surprisingly, the two have a rocky romantic history, with untapped passion always bubbling just below the surface.

The film opens with Dearing's nephews Zach and Gray (Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins respectively) being sent to her park while their parents, played by Andy Buckley and the woefully under-used Judy Greer, finalize a divorce. While the boys are expecting lots of bonding time with Aunt Claire, she is just far too busy to hang out with them, instead entrusting their first day on the island to her assistant Zara (Katie McGrath). Obviously, that's not going to go as planned.

Also on the island is the eighth richest man in the world Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) who purchased Jurassic World, and all of the original park's research, from John Hammond (the late Sir Richard Attenborough). An amateur helicopter pilot, Masrani is eager to see the park's newest attraction, the genetically modified Indominus Rex. The specifics of what DNA has been spliced together to create this hybrid are top-secret, but Masrani is so impressed that he is confident that it will "give even the adults nightmares."

As Indominus Rex has already grown larger than anticipated, Masrani has Grady brought in to inspect the current safety precautions being taken while the dinosaur is being prepped for its public debut.

At Grady's raptor enclosure, InGen security contractor Vic Hoskins (played by the very un-Wilson Fisk Vincent D'Onofrio) is practically giddy at the prospect of weaponizing the now "obedient" raptors.

Returning to the island is B.D. Wong as chief geneticist Dr. Henry Wu, the only character to survive the original trilogy and make it to JURASSIC WORLD. Apparently the catastrophic level of death and destruction caused by his clones has made him far more jaded than he was in 1993. Lauren Lapkus and Jake Johnson also appear as a pair of wonderfully goofy JURASSIC WORLD Control Room workers.

While most of JURASSIC WORLD's characters check their action-franchise stock-character boxes, as the movie went on, I found myself hating Howard's Claire more and more. While Howard gives the paper-thin part every drop of her considerable talent, this trope of the businesswoman who cares only about the bottom line; her employees, customers, family, and morals be damned; felt even more reductive here than it normally does. Seeing a strong woman as the head of this clearly successful billion dollar company should be empowering, but the assumption that she had to willfully ignore the well-being of family, staff, and guests alike, and to abandon all ethical concerns, to get there, seems like a missed opportunity.

The major issue with JURASSIC WORLD is not that it's a bad film, the issue is that it is actually three or four different films competing for dominance; not unlike Isla Nublar's dinosaurs. At times, it is an earnest homage to the original, featuring a pair of young siblings fleeing for there their lives. At one point, Zach and Gray even take refuge in the ruins of the original Jurassic Park, trudging up some welcomed nostalgia.

At other times, JURASSIC WORLD is a GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA-style monster film with extreme dinosaur-on- dinosaur violence. And yet, there are still times when director Colin Treverrow plays the action as a self-important allegory for the moral implications of our world's ever expanding scientific capabilities. When all is said and done, one version never fully takes control, and they never coalesce enough, to feel like one coherent film.

As is often the case with Pratt vehicles, the script writers throw in occasional bits of legitimate humor (predominantly from him, Johnson, and Lapkus) as brief respites from the life or death action. While the jokes play well in the moment, they ultimately feel a bit forced and unnatural given the circumstances.

As is practically expected at this point, the special effects are so good that they are decidedly unnoteworthy. The dinosaurs look so realistic, that it does become easy to forget that we have not actually found a way to clone them (yet). There has been a lot of discussion about how the writers of the film did a disservice to Steven Spielberg's original by ignoring the actual scientific research available surrounding dinosaurs in favor of an easy monster movie. I have no paleontological background, but, is that really a surprise to anyone?

Despite a certain dose of poetic irony in the film's final battle, JURASSIC WORLD ends on such "cheestastic" imagery, that it is difficult to take anything that came before it seriously. This movie is nowhere near the cinematic triumph of the original JURASSIC PARK, but it does succeed in entertaining for two hours and 10 minutes; so I guess chalk this one up as a summer movie win.

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Check out the trailer below:

JURASSIC WORLD starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Judy Greer, Vincent D'Onofrio, Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Irrfan Khan, Jake Johnson, Lauren Lapkus, BD Wong, and Omar Sy is rated PG-13 (for intense sequences of science-fiction violence and peril). It opens today nationwide in 3D, 2D, and IMAX.

Did you visit Isla Nublar? Did JURASSIC WORLD live up to your expectations? Let me know what you think in the comments below, or on Twitter @BWWMatt. Also, make sure to follow @BWWMoviesWorld on Twitter for all of the biggest news from the world of movies.

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Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

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