By Marc S. Sanders
You’ve seen this movie before. You likely saw it when you saw the trailer.
The Jurassic films spawned from Michael Crichton’s ingenious best-selling novel, Jurassic Park (my favorite book of all time), stampede on and on, going on thirty-two years now. Here is the seventh installment. Once again, reinvigorated with a new cast and a bankable headliner/former Marvel Avenger.
All year long, just like the last five films, I’m asking myself again why any of these people are going back to these islands. Well Rebirth lends as good an answer as any. Somehow the DNA from three different prehistoric mutated mega beasts will lead to a cure for heart disease.
Reader, from the outset I recognized the familiar pattern. I knew precisely who was going to survive and who was going to perish before the closing credits arrived. I got a perfect score, by the way. Likely, you will too and thus the suspense is very watered down in Jurassic World: Rebirth. Seven times on the merry go round, you should know by now which direction this ride is moving.
Nevertheless, I was hoping against hope that the cure for heart disease will make it for the eventual consumption of human civilization. The vials of Dino-DNA are collected and stored in an airtight briefcase. So, while the scant cast of people screams, runs, tip-toes, swims, climbs and falls all over this tropical island, located close to the equator, my eyes were fixated on this medical breakthrough.
Where are your priorities people? On the kid and her toddler dinosaur friend named Delores? Come on!!!!! There’s much more at stake here than that or Scarlett Johansson and two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali.
Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) is new director in the franchise and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The visuals of his dinosaur adventure are marvelous if not as impressive as they used to be. Just like David Koepp’s script shamefully admits, the world no longer cares about dinosaurs as much. Much of Jurassic World: Rebirth feels like a retread of the same old stuff. At best, the only inventions left to tackle is to mold new monsters that are of a Frankenstein product. The animals look fiercer and meaner and toothier and bigger…like way, way bigger.
Edwards and Koepp put the creatures in the ocean and in nestled caverns that have not been depicted as much before. The sequences are done well but still I felt as if I had seen this movie before.
Not much can be said about Johansson or Ali’s performances. She’s a high priced, skilled mercenary. He’s the charter boat captain. The rest of the cast is just the rest of the cast which includes some ready-to-sacrifice nameless folks gifted with screams to edit within and about five or six lines (one guy is privileged to share his French fluency), a pair of teenagers, an adorable kid and the resident greedy industrialist. You know who I’m talking about, right?
I’m amused by those who rank the Jurassic movies. How can you decide what is best or worst anymore? The blueprints are so identical and the Dino gobbles and Dino chases and Dino roars all blend together for me by now. If it was a Jeopardy category to identify which movie any scene was from, I’d lose big time and wager little on the Daily Double.
Beyond the first film from Spielberg none of these films are as special to me. Like Chinese food, I fill up and I go back for more but that’s it.
Still…
Go to the movies. Keep the cinema alive. See the new Jurassic World movie and have fun with this new iteration of people going to the restricted island where dinosaurs romp and play. I enjoyed it even if I never felt overwhelmingly stimulated. At the very least I enjoyed watching my wife clap when she learned that one character survived.
Me?
…and 3…2…1… of course!
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 