Jurassic World Review

Despite it being the fourth instalment in what must now be a franchise, Jurassic World comes over a decade after the third, its massive box office success would seem to have jumped upon audiences hunger for dinosaurs during that time. The park is now officially open and is looking to draw in more customers by offering new attractions in the form of genetically modified dinosaurs; needless to say everything goes horribly wrong. This new film features an entirely new cast, who’s characters and performances achieve varying levels of success. The strength, as with the original, is its young cast, the dinosaur mad young brother played by Ty Simpkins and the moody, mean and seemingly very horny older brother played by Nick Robinson (not the political editor for the BBC). Their performances avoid the usual trappings of disaster movies where you end up cheering for the annoying kids to be eaten, and seeing them come closer as brothers as result of the situation they’re put into is really effective, particularly the change we see in Nick Robinson’s older brother. Bryce Dallas Howard offers an enjoyable performance, but she’s lumbered with a very uninteresting character who’s character arcs are really broad strokes. Then there is Chris Pratt’s action hero Owen Grady. Pratt proved in Guardians of the Galaxy that he could play the leading man really well, however Owen Grady isn’t Star Lord and for me it doesn’t work, and I don’t believe Pratt as this action hero, the great thing about Star Lord is he is an action hero, but he’s also an affable idiot, whereas with Owen Grady its trying to sell you on something that doesn’t really work, and the film seems to agree with this because its really trying to force this image on you with lines like “your boyfriend is kick ass” and “Yeah, its Owen” and “no we want to stay with Owen”. Thankfully there are great performances in the supporting cast, Vincent D’onofrio’s villain may seem a bit one note, but Jake Johnson’s technician gets all the best laughs and Irrfan Khan tackles the loveable billionaire with great charm. Plot wise its all over the place and has more holes than a kitchen colander, but it doesn’t drop the pace for long enough to make you think on them, ultimately what the film achieves is that it’s tonnes of fun. Its not as smart as the original and far more generic than it, but it’s the best sequel and when Velociraptors are teaming up with a T-Rex to take down a newly designed dinosaur called the Indominus Rex, it’s never dull. (4 Stars)