The “Jurassic Park”/”Jurassic World” franchise always favored a janky, what-should-we-try-this-time approach. Fans of dinosaurs (and who isn’t?) and the 1993 Steven Spielberg original based on Michael Crichton’s novel, have been forgiving enough to show up for most or all of the sequels, with their new batches of dinosaurs and hilariously secondary humans.
Just as millions will never forget seeing Spielberg’s truly classic “Jaws,” millions look back at the first encounter with the classic-adjacent “Jurassic Park” with a warm feeling, for its revolutionary digital effects and, in particular, the lawyer on the toilet scene. It was so crafty and convincing visually, you found yourself thinking for a second that some stand-in had literally been eaten by a T. rex, while the American Humane monitor on set was over by the craft services table, looking the other way.
People have lots of opinions about their dinosaurs. As I took my seat for a recent preview screening of “Jurassic World Dominion,” the family on my left was debating which was the worst in the series so far: the second movie in the first trilogy or the second in the second.
Well, it’s neither. I’m afraid it’s this new one, “Jurassic World Dominion,” and neither its blobby story structure nor a frenetic running time of nearly two and a half hours (longest in the franchise) is the problem, really.
The problem is filmmaking craft, and how little director Colin Trevorrow (who made “Jurassic World”) brings to bear on the project. Something’s off here, all the way through the film’s warring personalities and wan subplots. The results may enjoy a big haul this summer, given the film’s nostalgic Grand Finale trappings and the melding of the first trilogy’s headliners — Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum — with the second trilogy’s nominal leads. But you know how it is with brand name blockbusters. Whether they personally bust your blocks means nothing. The IP is everything.
Why do I always have to look up the names of the characters played by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard? Owen Grady and Claire Dearing, that’s right, got it. Actually, I know why: Owen and Claire remain so thinly conceived on paper, it’s easiest to remember them by what they wear or no longer wear. Owen, the onetime raptor trainer, is first seen in “Jurassic World Dominion” wearing his trademark bright plaid flannel shirt as he’s roping a dinosaur (resembling Jar Jar Binks, which is too bad) during an open-air, Western-style sequence.
Meantime, his romantic partner, Claire, the formerly shrill, dislikable, patronized and high-heeled Jurassic World park manager, spends her nights poking around illegal dinosaur breeding facilities and performing rescue and relocation missions with her increasingly weary colleagues. The world and all its inhabitants have sort of it just had it in “Jurassic World Dominion.” Its heart is in the right place, but the vibe essentially says, well, whatever. We’re effed.
Picking up the idea dangled at the end of the previous “Jurassic” film, “Fallen Kingdom,” the planet now lives uneasily on the brink of chaos, with various species of dinosaurs freely roaming the earth, many confined to a wildlife refuge (or is it?) in the Dolomites.
The research facility is run by the fearsome Biosyn Genetics, run by Dr. Lewis Dodgson. Campbell Scott plays the character who popped up briefly, with another actor, in “Jurassic Park” waaaaaaaay back in ‘93. It’s a shame screenwriters Emily Carmichael and Trevorrow couldn’t rig up better banter for Campbell and Goldblum in particular. This time Goldblum’s chaos theory mathematician is a well-paid corporate hack working for Biosyn, but soon enough he meets up with his old colleagues played by Neill and Dern, and helps everything come out more or less right.
The plot keeps coming back around to the plague of oversized locusts ravaging the American heartland. This is a bug-centric dinosaur movie, when it isn’t hopscotching around the globe, stopping off at Malta for a motorcycle chase (Pratt vs. dinosaurs) so blatantly ripped off from the “Bourne” movies, you half expect Matt Damon to show up and get eaten.
The action is perpetual, and perpetually in need of a better director, and editing that heightens and sharpens our pleasurable excitement instead of dulling it. The appeal, I suppose, of the far-flung, constantly roving storyline this time around is its latitude for different sorts of mayhem and different genre shout-outs. But all too soon “Jurassic World Dominion” made me long for the best bits of Spielberg’s “Lost World” or J.A. Bayona’s “Fallen Kingdom.” Those folks know how to set up a shot, vary the rhythm and deliver the payoff.
It’s seriously nice to see Dern and Neill again, though, even amid routine material handled routinely.
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'JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION'
2 stars (out of 4)
MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of action, some violence and language)
Running time: 2:27
How to watch: In theaters Friday
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