★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
The park has gone and so has all direction and imagination in this interminable continuation of the Jurassic Park franchise. With neither the depth of Spielberg’s first adventure, the scare factor of his under-appreciated sequel, nor the nostalgic charm of 2015’s Jurassic World (the less said of Jurassic Park III, the better), this entry settles for retreading old ground. With the facility at Isla Nublar in ruins (again), a shady businessman plans to airlift the dinosaurs back to the mainland (again) in order that they may be exploited for military purposes (again), and also to spite his more aged and more peace-loving mentor (again).
As for our heroes, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is now a stringent dinosaur-rights activist, and she begrudgingly recruits Owen (Chris Pratt) to assist in saving the remaining dinosaurs from Isla Nublar’s suddenly active volcano. That is, before the doomed creatures are plucked from deliverance by Rafe Spall as the aforementioned suit, armed with a smile as untrustworthy as your average social media privacy policy.
Director J.A. Byona and cinematographer Óscar Faura do their best to bring some semblance of awe to proceedings, but returning screenwriters Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly’s script suffocates the Spanish duo’s usual flair for likeable characters and haunting imagery. There are some glimpses of the young Richard Dreyfuss in Pratt’s portrayal of Owen, but not enough to prevent him slipping into Star Lord-lite. Howard goes all in on the running (appropriately booted this time around) and screaming, and is easily the most watchable human presence. A new sidekick played by Justice Smith is immediately annoying, and his disappearance from the middle act would be a relief, were it not another indicator of the feckless screenplay losing track of who’s where and why.
“Why?” is a question I found myself asking a lot during this film. Mostly “Why aren’t I just at home watching Jurassic Park?”. The re-heated narrative structure, knock-off set pieces (we’re treated to re-runs of the museum showdown and The Lost World’s downtown dinos), plus a perfunctory appearance from Jeff Goldblum continuously serve to remind us of movies we’d rather be watching. And it’s never scary. Not once. My entire generation can attest to the nightmares of poor Eddie being bisected by the T-Rex pair in The Lost World, and the most this softened rehash can muster is ‘occasional bloody moments’. A largely dialogue-free prologue featuring some truly stunning imagery of monsters in the moonlight is the closest we come to genuine thrills, which is more than can be said for the genetically-enhanced ‘Indoraptor’, introduced by Toby Jones doing his best Donald Trump impression.
This creature is another of the screenplay’s walking clunkers: it’s sold to us as the fusion between Jurassic World’s Indominus Rex and a Velociraptor. A key plot point of the previous film was that the multi-breed Indominus was part-Raptor, and could therefore weaponise Owen’s pack against him. Did they just add more? Extra raptor with your half-raptor, sir? The Indominus - while not particularly chilling - served as a neat analogy for Hollywood’s misunderstanding that bigger equals better. The Indoraptor’s purpose seems to be to remind us that...er...rich people can be greedy and stupid? I don’t need the film to tell me that: that it exists at all is proof enough.
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