Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Wuchak 6/23/2021 3:58:12 PM 8.4

More dinosaurs, Opie’s hot daughter, Dracula’s castle and Indiana Jones “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” (2018) revolves around Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt) leading a team back to Isla Nublar to save several species of dinosaurs after an active volcano threatens all life there. The plan is to relocate the dinosaurs to a new island sanctuary, but that’s not the way it works out. My title blurb pretty much says it all for this fifth film in the franchise. I mention Indiana Jones because the movie has a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) vibe more so than the other movies. The reference to Dracula’s castle is due to the fact that the entire second half takes place at a cool, gothic chateau in Northern California and there’s a scene with a genetically-enhanced raptor acting like Dracula. Curvy Bryce is just stunning throughout and easily blows away any other woman in the series. Meanwhile Pratt seriously upped his game as leading action hero (I wasn’t overly impressed with him in the previous film, although I didn’t dislike him either). At the end of the day I’d have to rank this installment as my favorite, followed by the original 1993 movie and 2015’s “Jurassic World.” The film runs 2 hours, 8 minutes and was shot in Hawaii and England/Scotland. GRADE: A-/B+

Peter McGinn 8/5/2022 9:37:39 AM 8.4

Well, this is the fourth Jurassic Park movie I have watched over the past month and it feels like my reviews are very similar, something I try to avoid obviously. So let me get a few similarities out of the way. Once again a child is placed at risk, though these precocious kids always seem adept at outrunning dinosaurs even while under a blind panic, so hats off to them. There are of course bad guys on the dinosaur menu, up to at least three in this Jurassic entry. And as usual a couple of times our heroes are saved from certain death by one predator Dino attacking another at the last second. What are the odds? But it looks like we are finally moving away from the small island off the coast of Costa Rica, as the island seems to have been destroyed by a volcano eruption that oddly reminded me of the lava damage in Lord of the Rings. Poor dinosaurs. First there was the comet millions of years ago, and now the volcano nearly made the score Universe 2, Dinosaurs 0. But don’t fear, a handful got away and who knows how much DNA? I am not too impressed by the whole building a super dinosaur thing. Aren’t we reaching a critical mass where they might as well end this franchise and switch to having the monsters be old fashioned alien invaders? Oh, and Jeff Goldblum is back, though perhaps it was a dry, humorless clone of the original character who was a highlight of previous Jurassic movies, but who sounded like a didactic college professor this time. But hey, we have seen much worse sequels often, haven’t we? On some surface level, this entry in the franchise was entertaining as always. That seems built into the series’s DNA as well as often accompanying Spielberg’s name in the credits. And it must be frustrating to try and fail to match the magic of the very first film.

Per Gunnar Jonsson 5/16/2024 3:21:17 PM 8.4

As a kid dinosaurs was one of my great interests. Thus I was so thrilled by the first Jurassic Park movie, which I thought then, and still think today, is a great movie. Sadly the following movies have been a mixed bag to say the least. This movie falls in the “that was disappointing” category I am afraid. It is obviously that however wrote the story was a lazy bugger that simply rehashed old bits and standard Hollywood cheap concepts and then added some frustrating preaching to it. The two scenes, one at the beginning and one in the end, where Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) was just sitting and ranting on and on was enough by itself to drag down the movie a star or two. We get it, however wrote that crap do not like gene science. Then go and write a piece in a science journal or something. Oh wait, it would not have been excepted since there was no science in it, just ranting mixed up with poorly hidden religious beliefs. So instead you had to go and ruin a movie which was meant to simply entertain. The we have the rest of the story. The best, or should I say the kindest, word for describing it would be “predictable”. How many times are we going to do the big company captures animals for profit story? At least try to put some intelligence in the plot if you have to rehash it over and over again. It has even been done before in the same franchise for Christ sake! I would lie if I did not say that I found, at least, some entertainment watching the movie though. But pretty much all of it came from watching the scenery and the special effects. They at least were pretty good. But then I do like big monsters stomping around wreaking havoc and eating people, especially when it is the bad guys. There were some parts that was rather funny. I think Christ Pratt, and most of the other actors as well for that matter, did a fairly good job out of the lousy script. The idea of using a Stygimoloch to break free was quite cool and the havoc he wreaked somewhat funny. The part where Wheatley stop in the middle of all the chaos to extract a tooth as a bloody trophy was just silly though. The end scenes was just frustrating. However wrote that ought to be shot. A few dinosaurs escape and then the conclusion is that humanity have to live side by side with dinosaurs from then one. What a load of rubbish! Sadly, despite the genre being a favorite of mine and the special effects being pretty good, this film did not make it for me due to the unintelligent and lazy script.