REVIEW: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Courtesy of Universal

Good news, everyone who had a problem with Bryce Dallas Howard’s Jurassic World character running from dinosaurs in the jungle while wearing heels. The creative team heard your complaint and they fixed the issue in the new sequel, addressing it in the least subtle way possible.

That’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in a nutshell, using a chainsaw to do a scalpel’s job. It seems director J.A. Bayona, along with screenwriters Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly, appear to have spent so much time on the shoe fiasco that dozens of even bigger ridiculous story problems made it through the process undetected.

As a result, I spent most of the flick rolling my eyes at nonstop references to the original (far superior) Jurassic Park and shaking my head as unlikable characters make increasingly dumb decisions simply because the screenplay forces them to. I lost count of how many times I checked my watch.

Three years after dinosaurs escaped and destroyed Jurassic World, the island is essentially a human-free sanctuary for the majestic, deadly creatures. But now, a volcano is going to erupt at any moment, threatening the island’s remaining dinos.

(Quick tangent to point out two things: first, this makes the previous movie retroactively dumber since developers and scientists built a billion-dollar theme park/resort mere steps from an active volcano. Second: why is this scenario even a problem? Scientists can clone dinosaurs now – just make new ones.)

Anyway, former park exec Claire Dearing (Howard) – who’s reintroduced with a close-up of her high heels… ha ha, get it? – is an animal activist now, pleading with politicians to save the dinos. (Again, there’s a very simple solution to this problem.) After her requests fall on deaf ears, she’s contacted by a mysterious businessman (Rafe Spall) – let’s call him Mr. Exposition – who works for a billionaire (James Cromwell) that helped fund the original dinosaur project.

Mr. Exposition wants Claire to return to the island with former velociraptor trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and a team of perfectly friendly mercenaries (led by a scenery-chewing Ted Levine) to capture as many species as possible so they can be relocated to a new sanctuary island. Because no one ever learns from their mistakes in these movies, Claire completely trusts this man she just met, the plan works perfectly and they all live happily ever after.

Just kidding, everything goes wrong almost immediately. Without getting into spoiler territory, Fallen Kingdom turns into a completely different movie in the second half, trading the beauty and wonder of the island for a much more claustrophobic location. It felt like a bait-and-switch to me, but I could very well be the outlier. The crowd in my screening ate it up, frequently laughing, screaming and applauding. Maybe I’m just getting grumpy in my old age.

Part of my crankiness is because Bayona’s movie doesn’t earn any of its stakes or attempted emotion. Owen, Claire, and two supporting characters who disappear until they’re needed (played by Justice Smith and Daniella Pineda, both wasted) simply move from action sequence to action sequence, not because there’s a logical reason, but because they’re essentially avatars in a video game being controlled by an unseen player.

Again, every problem in the movie could be solved with a random scientist interrupting the movie stars to say, “it doesn’t matter – we can make more dinosaurs.” The villain literally does this 100 minutes into the movie, rendering his ridiculous plan and nearly two hours of my life completely meaningless.

The final moments are even more bonkers, with a character making a stupid decision for an even stupider reason. When Owen asks her why she performed this indefensible action, her response is supposed to be profound: “because they’re like me.” However, the intended seriousness of the moment was undercut by my colleague sitting next to me, who whispered, “uh, do you [expletive deleted] eat people?”

All of this is to set up yet another sequel, scheduled to hit theaters in 2021. It’s an admittedly interesting premise, I just wish I didn’t have to endure 128 minutes of setup to get there. It made me realize I was just watching a ridiculously long trailer for another movie I won’t see for three years.

I don’t blame the cast, particularly Pratt (although he needs to take some different roles, stat – he’s wearing out his welcome playing cocky, sarcastic Indiana Jones wannabes) and Howard, who do their best to overcome a painfully ludicrous screenplay (seriously, thank the movie gods that Trevorrow got fired from the next Star Wars movie). It’s also not Bayona’s fault. He made a visually stunning flick (with help from cinematographer Oscar Faura) and tries to make lemonade out of a lemon screenplay.

Honestly, I’m stumped that anybody can mess up a premise as loaded with possibility as “scientists bring dinosaurs back from extinction,” but there’s only been one great Jurassic Park movie despite five attempts. After the next sequel, maybe it’s time to throw in the towel.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of science-fiction violence and peril.

Grade: D+