Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Jurassic World Review

     
       Jurassic World is the 4th installment in the Jurassic Park franchise and basically ignores the events of Jurassic Park 2 & 3, as it should because those movies are terrible. 
       The events of Jurassic World take place 22 years after the original movie and Isla Nubar now features a fully functioning dinosaur theme park (named Jurassic World) as it was originally envisioned by John Hammond. After 10 years of successful operation, visitor rates have started to decline so now the park has to create a new attraction in order to re-spark interest. As you may have guessed, the new attraction backfires horribly. 
       This is a good movie. It's not great. It's good. I didn't like it as much as I wanted to, but I still had a great time watching it. 
       The director of the film is Colin Trevorrow. Trevorrow has never directed a big budget block buster before so I was worried about if he could handle something on this big of a level, but he pulled it off.  He understood what made Jurassic Park magical and he brought those specific elements into Jurassic World. No one will ever come close to touching the magic that the first one did but Trevorrow did the best that he could. 
       Bryce Dallas Howard bugged me for the first part of this movie. She was getting on my nerves. She was overacting and had terrible line delivery. However, as the movie went one she grew on me and I ended up loving her in the end. 
       The 2 kid stars in this movie are Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins (Insidious and Iron Man 3.) Just like Bryce Dallas Howard they annoyed me at first and unfortunately they never grew on me. They played the stereotypical older brother and younger brother relationship that we have seen over, and over again. The older brother picks on the younger brother, the older brother convinces the younger brother that they don't have to do something and because of that they get in trouble, and at the end they are a big happy family. No that is not a spoiler because everyone knew it was coming. Simpkins acts like a 6 year old when in reality he needs to act his age. From the very first shot of the movie I thought to my self "Please, let him get eaten by a dinosaur." There was this part that almost made me yell "COME ON!" in the theatre. That part was they just ran away from a dinosaur and they found these cars. The cars that were used to take tours around Jurassic Park in the first movie. These cars were broken down, big time, and it would be almost impossible to fix them with out any tools. But guess what, some how the kids figure out a way to fix the cars. Who do they think they are, MacGiver? I didn't believe it for one second. 
       I'm just glad there was one person who made good first impressions. That person was Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt (like always) stole the show. He was by far the best part about Jurassic World. In Guardians of the Galaxy and Parks & Rec, his role was very comedic. So coming into the movie I was worried that they were going to make him a comedic role. I don't want heavy comedy in a dinosaur movie. I'm glad I was wrong. Yes they had a little humor with his character (you can't have Chris Pratt and have no humor) but they also had dramatic parts which I was really excited to see him do. I know some people were worried about his part as a raptor trainer in the movie but,  let me tell you, you have nothing to worry about. It was handled very well and I think you will like where the raptor story line will go. 
       The side characters were meh. They were fine. They weren't bad enough to the point where I wish they were dead (like the 2 boys) but they could have been handled better. Along with the side characters, the sub-plots were sub-par. I found them useless. I found them boring. Especially the sub-plot/back story to the 2 boys. It was poorly done. 
       The script had problems. Some of the dialogue was cringe worthy. I wanted to cuddle myself into a ball and cry, it was that bad. 50% of the jokes fell flat. They weren't funny and it just made the scene awkward. The scripts's major problems only lasted until the part were we got our first action scene. Everything else before that just felt like filler scenes. In the first Jurassic Park the first hour of the movie didn't have any action scenes and it didn't bother me because it propelled the movie forward. Yes, in Jurassic World they needed the back story in order to explain why they were doing the things they were, I just felt like they could have done it better. There were some "plot twists" if you even want to call them that. I saw the twists coming from a mile away. It has some minor inconsistencies that could have been fixed with a better script. There were some pretty lame cop-out moments that made me mad.  
       The question most people were asking was are there any original cast members returning? There are 3. The DNA strand from the video from the first Jurassic Park, a scientist. and the T-Rex. Holy crap I love the T-Rex in this movie! It was used in the way I was hoping they would use it. That's all I will say about that. 
       I was really disappointed by the score. I mean how can you compare to the John Williams's score? You just can't. At least this score could have been a little more memorable. I was scared that they wouldn't have the original score, BUT THEY DID. I smiled (and maybe shed a tear) when I heard the famous Jurassic Park score. It's my favorite of all time and I'm so glad they included it. 
       The new threat in this movie was a dinosaur called the Indominus Rex. It's a hybrid dinosaur made up of other dinosaurs and some modern day animals. I loved they way the revealed him. They showed us the dinosaur little by little so by the time we saw the full thing I was amazed. I do wish at some points they would have focused on the Indominus a little more instead of a quick glimpse from the camera. The visuals were great. I didn't feel that they were overusing CGI at all. 
       Just one more thing that I really liked from this film are the references to the first movie. There is a part (which I won't spoil for you) where the 2 kids are wondering then they came across something from the first movie. I turned to the person I went to the movie with and had a freak out session by saying "Do you know what that is! Holy crap! Holy crap!" But beware this reference i'm referring to is very brief. You have to keep your eyes open and have to be paying attention. 
      Overall Jurassic World is a good movie. It's not great. I didn't like it as much as I wanted to, but I still had a great time watching it. It is a very fun summer blockbuster. It has some issues but the positive heavily outweigh the bad. I give Jurassic World a 6.5/10