The Case for Jurassicity

Jurassic Park back bigger and better than ever as Jurassic World.

A huge budget, mammoth monsters, Chris Pratt – this film is wheeling out the big guns (especially in Pratt’s case) and showing them off to the crowd (I was going to say “firing into the crowd”, but that would be taking  the metaphor a bit far).

20 years after the original doomed park, the new island attraction is open and doing bonza business.  But not enough.  Its time to get bigger and scarier and more out of control.  Give the masses the opium they want!  They want teeth and daring and action and monsters chomping on action people!

And the movie delivers by making everyone on the island insanely stupid, power hungry and stupid, smart but in a powerless position, or (in the case of our hero) always right but never heard until everything hits the fan and then can save everyone.  

I have to say, that kind of movie irritates me.  I can understand disasters and the like, but the human-caused contrivances that propel the plot provoked outrage within me, not joy at the carnage such dumbness would unleash.  Not so the rest of the packed TitanXC audience, that were rubbing their hands and salivating and talking to each other in not so whispered tones (I am looking at you, evil women in front of me!) in anticipation of the coming slaughter.

It takes its time to get there.  There are a couple of kids whom we follow through the park’s attractions, and whom I was hoping would get eaten within 15 minutes of their appearance, especially the older Lothario brother. 

Their aunt, played by the extreme asymmetrical bob of Dallas Bryce Howard, runs the park in high heels and is a hard nosed cow who somehow transforms into a heroine of some sort.  At least, I think she was supposed to but I never really warmed to her.

While she and Pratt are off with the main story, I was more interested in the control room plebs, including the awesome Jake Johnson and Lauren Lapkus who don’t get nearly enough screen time despite their awesome t-shirts and more interesting characters.

But then the point of the movie is the dinosaurs, and when they come into play, the plot holes and the uninteresting characters and all the things I might not have fully appreciated fell away and I got totally lost in the experience.  Jaws and teeth and screams and runnings and big things… totally impressive to watch, totally amazing to appreciate.  The humans get in there occasionally and do stupid things and get themselves blown up, but the dinosaurs rule the screen, and are a definite reason to see this at the movies.

Verdict: Jurassic World is big and dumb and everything I expected from the trailer.  Not surprising it is doing bonza box office, but this visual treat has a “barely trying” storyline in there. Worth seeing on the big screen, but I doubt I will watch it again.  6 unfeathered velociraptors out of 10.