JURASSIC WORLD (Colin Trevorrow). 124 minutes. Opens Friday (June 12). See listing. Rating: NNN
Where to watch: iTunes
Well, of course they were going to make another Jurassic Park movie. It’s been 14 years since Jurassic Park III, long enough for a whole new generation of kids to grow up on that bellowing T. Rex. And in all fairness, Jurassic World does a pretty nice job of updating the beats of Steven Spielberg’s revolutionary dinosaur opus for today’s kids, while adding just enough self-awareness to play to millennials raised on the original.
Set in a present where John Hammond’s dream of a dinosaur theme park is not only reality but an operation that’s been open long enough to start gene-splicing new attractions, Jurassic World mixes all the key ingredients – rampaging thunder lizards, kids in danger, adults pooling their skills to set things right – and amps up the classic Michael Crichton collision between blinkered good intentions and unexpected, bloody reality with several different conflicts.
First and foremost on the list of challenges is a big-ass new dinosaur, the Indominus Rex, the need for which is addressed with an in-movie explanation that works perfectly well as a meta-rationale for the entire project: people, we’re told, have long since gotten used to seeing dinosaurs. You have to come up with something new.
It’s merely a matter of time before the big girl gets loose from her paddock and starts working her way towards the park proper, with park CEO Bryce Dallas Howard and raptor wrangler Chris Pratt doing everything they can to stop her. (There’s also the small wrinkle of Howard’s young nephews, played by Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins, wandering off and landing straight in the beast’s path.)
As before, everything goes completely to hell, though this time the chaos is on a scale that even Jeff Goldblum’s sadly absent Ian Malcolm would find daunting. One of the best things about all three of the previous movies (yes, even Jurassic Park III) was the sense of intimacy – that people and dinosaurs were squaring off one-on-one, playing out an impossible Darwinian equation with limited resources and animal instincts.
That element is gone here, replaced by the impersonality of the film’s massive scale, which diminishes the human casualties and makes the dinosaurs seem a little less real. Even with a decade of advances in digital effects, I was much more aware of the CGI-ness of these creatures than I was in any of the previous films – although the murky 3D presentation might have been a factor.
Making his first big studio picture, director Colin Trevorrow has spent a lot of time thinking about the fine details. He’s cast every role with someone interesting – Jake Johnson and Lauren Lapkus are delightful as two of the park’s technicians, and Judy Greer does a lot with her modest screen time as Howard’s sister. Trevorrow works with his screenwriters (among them his Safety Not Guaranteed scripter Derek Connolly) to give every character a coherent, credible motivation. The most interesting notion about Jurassic World is the idea that no one is totally wrong in his or her position – they’re all just operating from a specific perspective that prevents them from understanding the bigger picture.
And full credit to the world-building, which verges on the ingenious: in addition to all of the upgraded or repurposed elements from the first movie, John Williams’s soundtrack keeps turning up in-world, playing as Muzak on the park monorail and even as someone’s text-notification ringtone. (As before, the franchise’s merchandising and branding are their own sneaky running gags.)
It’s the bigger picture that proves troubling: there just aren’t any surprises. Everything you expect to happen happens bang on schedule every wrinkle of the plot is immediately unwrinkled, the better to move on to the next challenge. Jurassic World functions precisely the same way as a theme park does, gliding the spectator through a series of calibrated set pieces.
I suppose it could be argued that the first Jurassic Park does, too. But this one doesn’t leave you rushing to get back in line for another go.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
