"Jurassic World": review

"Jurassic World" (2015) stars Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of Ron), Chris Pratt, Vincent D'Onofrio, Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Omar Sy (a French actor whose English was better than I thought it would be), BD Wong, and Irrfan Khan. The movie is based on the world's stupidest premise, which was apparently put forth as a suggestion by Steven Spielberg: what if Jurassic Park failed in the 1990s, but a functional dinosaur park/preserve arose in its place? For this premise to work, everyone within the Jurassic Park universe would have to have amnesia about the moral and practical lessons learned during the events of Crichton's two novels, Jurassic Park and The Lost World. But if you're willing to put that tiny issue aside, "Jurassic World" is a fun, often-hilarious thrill ride that trades depth for spectacle.

Claire Dearing (Howard) is an upper-level manager of Jurassic World, the megapark on Isla Nublar (where "Jurassic Park" first took place). She's all business, and when her two young nephews, Gray and Zach (Simpkins and Robinson), come to visit, she doesn't have any time to spare for them, so she hands their care over to her exasperated British assistant, Zara (Katie McGrath). Elsewhere on the island, Navy veteran Owen Grady (Pratt) is training deadly, irascible velociraptors to obey commands while InGen representative Vic Hoskins (D'Onofrio) looks on avidly and talks about weaponizing the animals. Owen and his assistant Barry (Sy) have developed something of a rapport with the current clutch of raptors; both of them know that Hoskins's idea will never work.

This is about all the setup you need. From here on in, you can predict how the rest of the movie will unfold. For example: because this is a Jurassic Park film, all hell is going to break loose, and humanity will once again be taught the lesson that nature is brutal and clever and quite beyond human control. You can also predict that Owen is going to run into Claire, which will lead to a romantic storyline. The two grownups will inevitably meet up with the two kids, but not before the kids are put in mortal danger in a repeat of the original T. rex attack from the first movie—but this time involving a genetically engineered Indominus rex, a freakish hybrid spliced together from the genes of all sorts of dinosaurs, making it into a killing machine that can change color to camouflage itself, mask its own heat signature from infrared surveillance, fool humans with diversions, and worst of all, gain the allegiance of the heretofore loyal-to-Owen velociraptors. People will die, but mostly the bad ones. One or two good folks will bite it, and plenty of unnamed extras will also perish.

Pratt, Howard, and the other leads are all good in their roles. Irrfan Khan, in particular, finally looks as if he's having fun in his role: the man normally plays sad, somber characters. The director, Colin Trevorrow, helms the film in an essentially Spielbergian manner (Spielberg was a producer), and the result is a light-hearted movie with a few attempts at jump scares (all predictable) but otherwise very little in the way of suspense. The dino effects are great but somewhat bland, given how chary the movie is about showing actual gore (quite unlike Crichton's novels; had Spielberg been more faithful to the books, the films would all have been labeled horror movies).

I found the film watchable and fun, but its lack of substance made it less of a rib-sticking stew and more like cotton candy: there and gone. The themes and issues explored in "Jurassic World"—human arrogance in the face of nature—haven't changed since the 1993 film, so there's nothing new here, except maybe for the idea that velociraptors and tyrannosaurs have the potential to be cute. I will, however, applaud the fact that this movie is smart enough to have a ready response to complaints that the dinosaurs don't look realistic: geneticist Dr. Wu (Wong) tells park CEO Simon Masrani (Khan) that all of the creatures on the island have been genetically engineered, with frog DNA filling in whatever gaps there are in their genome. Not a single dino is a true-to-life recreation. The movie gets points for making that clear. Meanwhile, probably the best dynamic in the whole movie is the evolving relationship between big, bad Owen and the boys: at one point, when Owen is tearing off into the jungle with his pack of raptors, one of the boys turns to Claire and intones respectfully, "Your boyfriend is a badass." Claire smiles quietly, not denying that Owen is her boyfriend.

So, yes: watch "Jurassic World" and have fun, but don't think too hard about the movie's fundamentally flawed premise, which is the equivalent of a prison warden saying, "You know what? Those cells are too confining! Let's open 'em up and keep 'em open!"—then, twenty-some years later, doing exactly the same thing.