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| "It's gonna be just like taking a walk in the woods... 65 million years ago." |
Jurassic World has taken the world by storm already. It has claimed the honour of biggest opening weekend of all time from The Avengers much to everyone's shock. I was a little late in seeing Jurassic World, so I was seeing it with this hype in mind and the rave reviews I was hearing from so many friends, while also keeping in mind the more critical reviews online. All in all, I can't really say Jurassic World disappointed me, but it didn't amaze me either.
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| Chris Pratt stares in awe at the pile of cash from his latest hit blockbuster. |
The film has a simple enough story, and follows the new park recreated from what was originally envisioned way back in Jurassic Park. Now called Jurassic World, the shareholders of the park are worried that the public are getting bored of dinosaurs and are asking scientists to genetically engineer new dinosaurs in order to peak customer interest. Of course, the experiment goes wrong, they create something more powerful than they can contain, and the film follows the ensuing antics on Dino-Island as everyone enters a mad rush to survive and stop the experimental dinosaur: the Indominus Rex. I don't really have much of a problem with the base story. On the contrary, I enjoy the idea the public would get bored of dinosaurs and I completely bought the fact that scientists would meddle further with genetics and create our own undoing. The film's subplots, unfortunately, don't fair as well generally as the main plot. Without going into spoiler territory, one of the subplots that was particularly weird was something relating to two young children on the island. In a random scene, one of them breaks down crying because of something happening with their parents back at home. It's unrelated to the action on the island and never mentioned again, and does nothing but slow the story down. Another subplot is the one relating to Vincent D'Onofrio. It feels like I just finished praising this guy for his fantastic antagonist in Daredevil, only to find Jurassic World completely wastes him. His character is literally just a guy stomping around the island insisting that dinosaurs should be used by the military. Seriously. It's as stupid as it sounds, and while the family subplot I mentioned was thankfully just one scene, you have to deal with this for the entire feature. It gets annoying very quickly.
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| Bryce Dallas Howard has the most interesting character in the film. Besides the dinosaurs. |
The acting in the film is all fine. Chris Pratt fairs a lot better than the trailers show. I was worried initially that his comedic background coupled with the goofy lines and serious demeanor would come off somewhat satirical in the film. Luckily, although his character is a little one-note, Pratt does a good enough job portraying him. Bryce Dallas Howard is the real star of the show. Again, for the first half of the film her character is rather stereotypically stiff and dull for no explained reason. But in the last half she really gets to shine, and her portrayal convinced me of the terror of the events unfolding on screen. The rest of the actors are fine, but not really noteworthy. None are bad enough to detract from the film, but none really so good that they shine. In fact, none of the characters really got much of a chance to shine here. They were mostly very much one note stereotypes, and I was nowhere near as interested in any of the characters here as I was in the original Jurassic Park. The film seems to focus way more on dinosaur spectacle than character appeal, and the lasting memory of it suffers due to it. There's no 'Ian Malcolm'-esque stand out characters that you're gonna remember over the dinosaur action, and that kinda sucks.
The rest of the film is fine too. Michael Giacchino's fantastic score mostly does a fine job of evoking memories of the original film, the CGI for the most part stands up pretty well, director Colin Trevorrow does a great job at invoking tension and terror in a few scenes of humans hiding and escaping the dinosaurs and the film looks fantastic in IMAX 3D. There's a few too many hiccups here and there for me to call the film great, and it doesn't nearly live up to the spectacle of the original, but Jurassic World is still a pretty decent film, and there are worse ways to kill a couple of hours.
Jurassic World - 7 / 10
