Peppered throughout Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World are self-aware, and self-defeating, references to the original 1993 film and what one can only imagine as the sequels to come; from a techie in a vintage Jurassic Park t-shirt to a military grunt who imagines a world in which trained velociraptors are weaponized and sent into combat zones. A little irony and self-deprecation are all well and good in otherwise perfunctory franchise revitalizations, but Jurassic World runs into trouble when it feels like Trevorrow breathed more life into offhand references than to the actual movie.
In Jurassic World, the titular park originally envisioned by John Hammond in the first film has become a reality, complete with rides, petting zoos and guided tours. Yet nefarious and shady forces still wish to tamper with nature in pursuit of power and profit. Park operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) has been collaborating with chief geneticist Henry Wu (B.D. Wong) to engineer a new species of dinosaur, Indominus Rex, to pull in more crowds. (Quote, “No one’s impressed by a dinosaur anymore.” How meta.) Meanwhile, velociraptor trainer and good-guy soldier Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) butts heads with corporate head of security and bad-guy soldier Vic Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio) over the use of the wild, formerly extinct beasts for use in the battlefield. All hell breaks loose when the Indominus proves more intelligent and capable than anticipated, breaking free from its confines and embarking on a killing spree while Claire’s nephews are caught in the park.
Joss Whedon’s famous tweet in disgust with the apparent sexism of the Claire-Owen dynamic (freewheeling jack-of-all-trades seduces uptight woman) might have been accurate had anyone in the movie been more than the broadest outlines of humans engaging in something resembling natural interaction. Every time a character is introduced, Trevorrow’s direction practically shouts whether that person will live or die and how it will happen. Pratt’s performance, while endearing, is indistinguishable from if he’d been in a parody of the same film. Extraneous, inane side plots are piled on for no reason other than to create something to be resolved.
But you don’t buy a ticket to this movie for the drama, you go for awesome dino fights, and here the movie is slightly more than a mixed bag. Indominus is a frightening monster visually and conceptually, close to what last year’s Godzilla should have looked like, and is a far more effective villain than D’Onofrio. Many of the action sequences never appear to be more than flailing in front of a green screen, but the triumphant tone of the final showdown partially makes up for the CGI fatigue.
Long on irony and short on plot, Jurassic World might be more fun had there been a single surprise along the way. It’s almost as though Trevorrow is embarrassed to be at the helm, constantly referring to the franchise’s history while doing little more than setting up all-but-certain sequels. In movies, as in life, it’s generally a bad idea to remind the people you’re supposed to entertain that they could be having a better time somewhere else.
Playing this week
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Entourage
Insidious 3
Love & Mercy
Mad Max: Fury Road
Pitch Perfect 2
San Andreas
Spy
Tomorrowland
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213
