Jurassic World

Colin Trevorrow – 2015 – USA

Rarely have I been so surprised by how unimpressed I was with a film that people seem to love so universally and completely.  It has not a bit of the charm and spirit of adventure that Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original had.  And the popular argument that at least it’s better than the other two intervening sequels isn’t really saying much.  With the exact same plot and 1% of its budget, Jurassic World would be little more than a SyFy Channel movie; complete with mad scientists, evil mercenaries, ridiculously outsized CGI monsters, and the old trope about monsters being genetically engineered to become weapons of mass consumption.  That’s right, velociraptors and a regal Tyrannosaurus Rex aren’t enough anymore; we need a fictional monster that’s even bigger and huger and can kick a T-Rex’s butt.  These awful clichés might be tolerable if there was anything endearing about the story, the direction, or the performances, but there isn’t.  Adults and kids alike are polished, homogenized stereotypes borrowed straight from a TV commercial; nary a hair is misplaced nor a piece of clothing frayed as this alabaster-skinned cast pretends to react to big, scary things in scene after scene.  Yes, of course there is a basic pleasure to be had in seeing dinosaurs marauding around and stepping on people, especially in a crowded theme park, but that’s also the problem; the main saurian antagonist isn’t a dinosaur at all; it’s an unnatural experiment gone haywire, with no personality or other characteristics to make it appealing.  Frankenstein’s monster it isn’t.  I found the overuse of the John Williams score from the original movie a little feeble too; as it only tended to remind me of how superior that film was; it’s appeal to nostalgia didn’t render me forgiving towards this one’s flaws.