I feel like every time I have gone into a movie from the ‘Jurassic Park’ franchise I have known exactly what I was getting myself into: Hopeful idealist wants to give the world a future with dinosaurs. Opportunists sell secrets to someone with dangerous motives. Dinosaurs do what they were born to do and we are once again shown how, in the fight of “Man Vs Nature,” we never win.
The plot of ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ follows the same structure. A volcano is going to erupt and kill off all the dinosaurs at the now abandoned Jurassic World Theme park. Instead of letting the circle of life do it’s thing and kill off what is left of the dinosaurs, the hopeful idealist, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), enlists Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), the Rapture extraordinaire and her, once again, ex to go back to the island of Isla Nublar to try and relocate selected species to a safe habitat. It becomes clear that the man funding this little rescue operation has his own agenda and after adding the dinosaurs, as expected, chaos ensues.
If you are going into this movie looking for jump scares, examples of poor choices in the face of danger, and a sprinkling of romance, this is a good movie for you. I mean that in the most positive way. I actually enjoyed the ride.
Chris Pratt is everything a Hollywood front man should be and Bryce Dallas Howard is a believable idealist. Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm didn’t have much of a part. I would have liked to see him more but who wouldn’t welcome more Jeff Goldblum?
One thing that always bothered me about the sequels to the first Jurassic Park was that there really wasn’t any change in the plot. They would always put in these moments that left it open to a pretty dynamic multi movie arch but they never went back to pick up those pieces. ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’, picked up the pieces of the first Jurassic world, finally brought the dinosaurs into a new environment, and added more points of interest. Now that did mean that there aren’t as many Dinosaur heavy scenes but, as a whole, what they replaced it with added actual questions that I hope they answer in another installment. It was a fun summer ride.
3 1/2 out of 5 stars
