Saturday, August 1, 2015

Jurassic World review



After hearing friends say that they enjoyed Jurassic World, I decided to give the movie a try even though I wasn't really crazy about dinosaurs.

The movie stars Chris Pratt as Owen, a dinosaur trainer, a dinosaur whisperer of sorts, and Dallas Bryce Howard as Claire, Jurassic World's operations manager. All chaos breaks loose when the park's latest genetically modified dinosaur escape its enclosure and it is up to Owen and Claire to join forces to save the day. To complicate matters, Claire's two nephews Zach and Gray are visiting the park when this happens.

While the movie is enjoyable enough, serving a nice blend of action and comedy, what I found hard to get out of my head throughout the movie was: "How on Earth did Claire spend several hours running around the park in her high heels without ever falling once?" I felt this detracted from the rest of the movie and might have marred my enjoyment of the movie quite a bit.

Also, all the characters are rather two-dimensional, with Owen and Claire playing polar opposites, Owen as an easygoing guy and Claire as an uptight corporate type. Claire’s eventual character growth and development is too predictable and makes her character rather boring.

Unfortunately for me, I found the plot rather sexist at times. Claire's female assistant is attacked by a dinosaur in an extended scream-fest scene more suitable in a horror than a PG-13 movie like this. Also, oddly enough, after seeing their aunt Claire be all bad-ass and save Owen from becoming dino-chow by shooting a dinosaur with a gun (minor spoilers), her nephews adamantly want to stick with Owen instead of her, just because she lacks a Y-chromosome. I also found it rather unrealistic that one of Claire's nephews was easily able to fix up an old vehicle and have it running and fully operational in no time flat without any outside help.

Right from the get-go, you’ll know who is going to make it and who doesn’t, which takes some of the suspense out of the movie. The army subplot provided by the character of Vic Hoskins, who wants to use the raptors as military weapons, is rather over-the-top and silly.

Despite the rather predictable and at times really asinine plot, the movie is entertaining enough and enjoyable at times, mostly from its nicely orchestrated action sequences.

3 and a half out of 5 stars for me.

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