REVIEW: ‘Jurassic World’: weak sequel, fantastic tribute

Cut about a half hour from this flick, and I could give it a glowing review. A half hour is a lot of movie-time, though.

“Jurassic World” is presented as a direct sequel to the original (apparently pretending 1997’s “The Lost World” and 2001’s “Jurassic Park 3” don’t exist. Maybe that’s why the 14-year gap: to forget those two), and as a sequel, the film fails completely. A successful sequel moves the story/characters/world forward. “Jurassic World” doesn’t do that.

But what it does do is provide a fantastic tribute to the 1993 classic. I had lots of issues with the film, but every tribute to the original actually made me emotional. I was surprised how powerful my connection was to the first film.

But I’m ahead of myself. First of all, nobody learned anything from the past, and “Jurassic World” takes place at a time when the previously failed dinosaur park is open and thriving. Karen (Judy Greer) sends her two kids by themselves to visit the dinosaurs, though it is not clear why she’s ok sending 8-year-old Gray (Ty Simpkins) and his young-teenager brother Zach (Nick Robinson) alone,
especially when it was stated that the Zack is negligent, aloof, girl-crazed, and actually hates his little brother.

The plan is to meet up with their Aunt Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), who is some kind of Jurassic World vice president, and spend a lovely week with her and dinosaurs. One of those dinosaurs, though, is a genetically modified super-smart maniac, so things don’t really work out as planned.

What I consider the central story of “Jurassic World” is really quite good. The ultra-hybrid, genetically-enhanced ‘Mosasaurus’ is loose and has decided to make sure he’s the alpha by killing everything he sees, while Owen (Chris Pratt), Claire, and a few friendly raptors are hunting him down to save the day. That’s the good story. There is another one, though: Militarized raptor spies.

Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio), some kind of military/private contractor guy, is a bit obsessed with Owen’s pet project of training velociraptors. This mostly involves getting them to not kill him, but Hoskins sees something else entirely. He (logically) makes the leap from Owen’s modicum of control over the raptors, to militarized dinosaur assassins, and I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that all I could picture was a bunch of raptors sitting in a military briefing room with a pyramid of bad-guy pictures on a cork-board:

“This is Bull-nose Dan,” Hoskins would say, pointing to the top-most picture, “the terrorist leader,” followed by snarls and aggressive head shakes from the militant killing machines.“He’s been spotted hiding out somewhere in this densely populated city block. Go get him!” At which point they … find the guy and kill him, I guess.”

If Hoskins’ character in its entirety went away, though (as well as the hyperactive, spastically annoying Ty Simpkins character and the ridiculous, out-of-place and confusing Pterodactyl scene), then there’s a movie worth watching; a movie with awesome supporting characters (like Lowery (Jake Johnson, who plays Nick from the TV show “New Girl”) in the control room, who is so completely unassuming that I was never prepared for the hilarity every single thing he said), fantastic special effects … and Christ Pratt.

Pratt drives the whole film, and every other character was in awe of him: including the raptors. And yes I’m calling the raptors characters. A major element of the final battle was the raptors transitioning from barely-controlled beasts to characters with personalities and emotions. And Blue (the raptor) becomes something more akin to a very loyal (and very deadly) dog, which was outstanding.

“Jurassic World” succeeds when it focuses on being nothing more than a story about a genetically-altered, crazy-killer giant dinosaur being hunted down by Owen the raptor-whisperer and his dino buddies (oh yeah … and T-Rex, the best cameo of the whole film).