Review: Jurassic World

Not even Chris Pratt, and his robot acting, could save this failed sequel. (Universal Pictures/aceshowbiz.com)

Have you ever seen one of those movies that you just wish hadn’t been made? And not just any kind of movie, but a sequel, or ‘reboot’ from a popular franchise. Ever seen one that was so mediocre and at times poor, and your only wish was that it had never gotten the green light? Of course you have, because that’s the majority of summer movies these days. And unfortunately, Jurassic World fits this category perfectly, and comes nowhere even remotely close to the magic of the original film, and made me sad that they have to keep churning out installment after installment just for money’s sake.

There’s a lot wrong with this movie, but for a brief moment, I’ll say what I did enjoy: some of the action sequences. And given the budget and scale of this thing, it’s good they at least got that right some of the time. At times during the movie, there were sequences that were quite gripping and fun to watch….but they were very few and far between. One other bright spot I suppose was Jake Johnson who provided what I thought was the only comedic relief. So, what went wrong? Whoa boy…

For starters, it felt like all the main actors – especially Pratt and Howard – just met each other and only have one chance to get each scene done. The acting was sort of painful to watch, like watching robots interact. There was nothing fluid or natural about any of it: the jokes fell flat, the love story was uninteresting, and it also felt like they were reading right from the script. And is it mean to say the two main child actors were bad, or annoying? If you remember the original, Jurassic Park, the two child actors were actually really good in their roles.

The plot turns that kept coming up were really kind of silly (even for a summer blockbuster, popcorn type of film). I mean…dinosaurs for military use? It took years to write out a script for this sequel and that’s what was used? Furthermore, I know that almost every big movie does this, but for a movie in the line of Jurassic Park to have Mercedes-Benz, Starbucks, and other product placement so blatant just felt wrong.

This isn’t an awful movie, as much as my review may paint it as one. It’s just so horribly disappointing and so…so far removed from the sheer brilliance of the original film. To compare the two might be unfair, but even by itself, Jurassic World has flaws aplenty. The acting, the premise, the ‘humor’, and even some of the action, it just wasn’t good. My only hope is that this is the last sequel in this catalog. But I know that can’t be true, because this one’s already making too much money for Hollywood not to green light yet another one.

JURASSIC WORLD:   (out of 4)