Movie Review: Jurassic World

22 years ago, a group of scientists and their children were terrorized by a group of lab-engineered dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park. Spielberg's blockbuster delighted audiences and redefined blockbusters with its groundbreaking visuals and special event feel. The series went on to spawn two financially successful but middling sequels that didn't leave much of a lasting mark on the filmgoing public.   After a 14-year hiatus, the Jurassic Park series has come roaring back to the screen with Jurassic World, which brings the series' prehistoric horrors to a new generation of moviegoers.

Its been over two decades since disaster rocked tech-billionaire John Hammond's dinosaur theme park, but after some good PR and successful re-branding, guests have been flocking to Jurassic World on the remote island of Isla Nubar. Attendance has been steady since the park reopened, but according to focus groups run by the park's operators, the people want to see bigger, more lethal dinosaurs at Jurassic World. The public's desire for bigger dinosaurs forces park owner (Irrfan Khan) and manager (Bryce Dallas Howard) to have the park's chief geneticist Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong, reprising his role from the first film) and his team cook up a brand new dinosaur in their lab. What Wu comes with up is a hybrid dinosaur known as the Indominus Rex- which contains the DNA of numerous predatory dinosaurs and other animals such as the tree frog and the cuttlefish. Of course, the Indominus Rex ends up being much scarier, deadlier and intelligent than the park runners had hoped,and their creation soon breaks out of its habitat and begins freely roaming the park, killing anything that gets in its path. Now it's up to the park's raptor trainer and resident dinosaur expert Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) to stop the Indominus Rex before it eviscerates the thousands of guest and employees that are on the park's property.

Jurassic World is about as dumb and flat-out absurd as a blockbuster can be. The screenplay is littered with gaps in logic and underdeveloped characters/subplots, a majority of the characters make decisions so mind-bogglingly stupid that they make stereotypical brainless horror movie characters look like Rhodes Scholars, and the acting-save for Pratt, whose work here further solidifies his standing as one of the best action heroes in the business- ranges from bad to subpar at best. No matter poorly-conceived or corny it is at times, Jurassic World is never less than absurdly entertaining to watch. The film is designed as a spectacle to watch badass dinosaurs wreak havoc on a group of unsuspecting humans and in that regard, the film is a smashing success. Director Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed) transitions gracefully from the world of indie comedies to ginormous blockbusters, packing each action sequence with a liberal amount of edge-of-your-seat suspense.  The choice to pile on the dino carnage is enough to make you forgive and forget about the film's deficiencies in just about every other area. Jurassic World isn't even close to being the game-changer the 1993 original was, but it's exactly the type of loud, idiotic and fun thrill ride the summer movie season is built around. 

3.5/5 Stars