Formula: Jurassic Park + The Lost World: Jurassic Park + Jurassic Park III + No lessons learned about hubris
Plot: Claire (Howard) is operations manager over the decade-old, thriving Jurassic World Resort: reopened after the disaster of Jurassic Park. She has two nephews (Gray and Zach) visiting the resort who she doesn't have much time to see. She's busy dealing with a new exhibit: a new dinosaur, created in a lab under guidelines to make something bigger, fiercer, and cooler (which sounds like the studio notes for this movie). Owen (Pratt) is a Raptor Whisperer trying to shut down a plan of a military man, Hoskins (D'Onofrio) who wants to use the raptors for war. Claire pulls Owen in to investigate the habitat for the new dinosaur, the ominously named Indominus Rex, when all hell breaks loose. You can pretty much guess what happens from there since you've seen Jurassic Park (or any action/disaster movie) before.
Thoughts: It doesn't really matter if the movie is great or if it's wholly derivative. The second I hear that iconic score or when they show the gates or as soon as I see one of the dinosaurs, I'm completely taken over by the nostalgia of it all. Jurassic Park is a special movie in pop culture and Jurassic World leans on that in all the right ways.
Chris Pratt is a movie star through and through. I can't say that Bryce Dallas Howard brings anything unique to her role, although she finds ways to have fun with it as the movie continues. In fact, the biggest drawback I can find for the movie is that the characters are not well rendered. They are sketches of characters who say what they are supposed to in an action movie (My favorite example of this is Howard making an accurate observation about her heels being the wrong shoes for all this, yet she continues to run, climb, and hike in them throughout the movie like it's no problem because that's what women do in action movies). The story makes as much sense as it needs to. I'd pick at it more, but that strikes me as missing the point of it. Most importantly, this gives the audience what it wants. There's big dinosaurs, plenty of spectacle, a couple of scares, room for sequels, and Chris Pratt being a bad ass.
A lot of fuss will be made about this being the second biggest opening weekend ever. That's going to outsize the quality of the movie. This movie is huge because Chris Pratt is huge, because people love dinosaurs, because the 3D release a couple of years ago of Jurassic Park made this feel like a direct sequel rather than a decade late sequel to the underwhelming third movie, because the marketing was on point, because any number of things. The final product is fine. It's not special. Don't expect to be say, a seven year old again, wetting yourself in the theater when the T-Rex attacks...you know, or something.
Elephant in the Room: This resort is run horribly. It's true. There's no way a resort gets this big without way more oversight. Look, I approach a movie like this with the "One big leap" principle. I make one big leap (ex. This is a world where dinosaurs exist) and after than, I need the rest to make sense to the world. It is not in any way believable that a resort this large and potentially dangerous can be this poorly managed. This new dinosaur is created with apparently no one seeming to know anything about it. The scientists don't even have to tell the owner of the park what the dinosaur is made of. I've been to Disney World too many times. No, for a resort to be that popular given how potentially dangerous it is, I don't buy it. Too many leaps for me.
To Sum Things Up (In 57 Words or Less):
More than any of the other sequels, Jurassic World remembers what made the original movie so popular. It's a great summer popcorn movie and doesn't aspire to much more. The characters aren't very memorable but the dinosaurs are. And that's the way it really should be.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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