Review // Jurassic World

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Unless of course you’re in the business of dinosaur amusement parks. In the alternate reality created by Stephen Spielberg (or, more accurately, Michael Crichton) way back in 1993, genetic scientists and their morally compromised financial backers have never wavered from the elusive dream that is a fully functional dinosaur amusement park. Fully functional meaning of course an amusement park where the dinosaurs don’t escape and eat you. It’s trickier than it seems, but at the beginning of Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World, that’s exactly what they’ve done.

Jurassic World begins with Richard Hammond’s dream come to life. Isla Nublar, the small jungle enclave off the coast of Costa Rica, is now home to a fully functional dinosaur theme park, complete with Seaworld-esque water shows, hourly T-Rex feedings and an IMAX theatre! The park even boasts it’s very own Main Street USA (or dinosaur themed equivalent) a sea of happy tourists gleefully wandering the park as if they’ve never heard of the events of the first three films. It’s a sort of willful ignorance that pervades the story (written by Trevorrow and co-screenwriters Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver and Derek Connolly) from minute one. This is a world where the old park exists as a goofy t-shirt bought off Ebay or a statue of Hammond in the visitor’s centre, not as a horrifying memory only two decades old. That memory is left to us, the audience, and so it’s with a sort of sick dramatic irony that we watch things go to hell.

At the centre of the story are two brothers, 10-ish year old Gray (Ty Simpkins) and his teenage brother Zach (Nick Robinson). Sent to the park so that their parents (Judy Greer and Andy Buckley) can get a quick weekend divorce, the boys are meant to spend some long overdue time with their shrewish aunt Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) the high-strung manager of the park. Gray is a ball of energy, rattling off dino-facts to distract himself from the thought of what’s going on at home. Zach on the other hand is far more interested in making eyes at girls and sending selfies to his girlfriend than the prehistoric lizards all around them. That changes however when the boys get themselves into a remote corner of the park just in time for the newest attraction – a genetically modified super-beast called Indominus Rex – to escape. Cooked up in the lab by Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong reprising his role from the first film) in an effort to boost ticket sales, the dinosaur escapes its enclosure after a close call with Owen (Chris Pratt) an ex-navy man and dinosaur sympathizer now working with a research team studying the park’s raptors. Alerted of the missing boys he and Claire set off to find them before it’s too late.

If there was concern over the choice of greenhorn director Colin Trevorrow they disappear pretty quickly as the film moves forward. Tightly paced, with tongue-in-cheek dialogue and plenty of top-notch CGI, Trevorrow hones closely to what made the first film work. Where the original Jurassic Park cashed in on a slow build towards an eventual deluge of dazzling special effects, the new film works the same, just with more dinosaurs. Jurassic Park had one shot of the T-Rex’s robotic head looming through the side windows of a jeep? This one was two. Jurassic Park had a T-rex chase a jeep down a jungle road? This one has raptors chase a motorcycle-led caravan through a forest. Jurassic Park concluded with a triumphant raptor vs. T-Rex fight? This one…well you’ll see for yourself. The true difference is that where the first film featured just a handful of characters trying to survive on the island, Jurassic World has thousands, and Trevorrow cleverly reminds us of this, regularly cutting back to the blissfuly ignorant crowds as the beasts stomp closer.

The most pleasant surprise in Jurassic World is the performance of the young actors. More than anything this is the success for director Trevorrow, as coaxing truly affecting performances from child actors is one of the most notorious skills of his predecessor Mr. Spielberg. The dynamic between brothers forms the emotional core of the film and manages to be far more interesting than the romantic plot line. Though they never create real sparks on screen, Pratt and Howard both deliver strong performances; Pratt deftly walking that line between heroic and goofy while Howard’s transformation from pristine business woman to Die-Hard-level-dirty tank top wearing badass is finished off with the year’s most ridiculous sprint in high heels. Add to this nice comic turns from Jake Johnson and Lauren Lapkus as wise-cracking control-room technicians and a sinister (if rather unnecessary) villain in Vincent D’Onofrio, and the film rarely has a dull moment.

As a summer blockbuster Jurassic World hits all the right notes. Sure the science probably makes no sense, and Owen’s strange raptor bond borders on the absurd, and the fact that no one in this world thinks a dinosaur amusement park is a bad idea after three movies worth of dinosaur-murder related headlines is preposterous…but that’s kind of what makes it fun. We know those stone walls aren’t going to hold. And we know that jerky character is going to be dinosaur food by the third act. But we want to watch it anyway. Where I’d fault a lot of films for being predictable rehashes, somehow Jurassic World works, and it works largely by reminding us of what we liked about the first film. Like hopping on the same roller coaster over and over again, you know what’s coming, but you still enjoy the ride.

Reviewed by Evan Arppe.