JURASSIC JUGGERNAUT
Dinosaurs burst into theatres
Jurassic World gives us something very old and something new. One scene left me gawping: I hadn’t seen anything this amazing since the flying monkey invasion of ’39.
And that was just the Pteranodons. The real star of the show is a huge meat-eater called Indominus rex. I know: The name is just asking for trouble, but as park manager Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) explains, it’s got the benefit of being easy to pronounce. Even while running from it.
The movie is set 22 years after the original Jurassic Park. Conveniently, as it allows the one returning character, geneticist Henry Wu, to age in real time. The dino-park envisioned by Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond has become a success, so much so that tourists are becoming bored with it and demanding bigger, fiercer animals.
Wu steps up and delivers Indominus, which is to T. rex what a Hummer is to a Jeep. Trouble is, only Claire seems to think the new beast is a good idea. The park’s owner (Irrfan Khan) worries that profits are being put ahead of the well-being of the dinos. Controlroom nerd Lowery (Jake Johnson, rocking a classic T-shirt from the first movie) brings up the notion of chaos. Dangerous-animal expert Owen (Chris Pratt) muses: “Maybe progress should lose for once.” All that’s missing is Jeff Goldblum.
Of course the naysayers will be proven right. Otherwise, you’ve got no movie. And there are two yeasayers: Claire, whom we hope will survive because she’s got a good heart; and Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio), who wants to turn velociraptors into living weapons, and who’d better get eaten or I want my money back.
Then there are the requisite kids in peril. Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson play brothers Gray and Zach, sent to visit their aunt Claire and check out the park. Mom (Judy Greer) stays home and worries, a perfect role for an actress who somehow always looks to be on the verge of tears.
Most of the acting is a trifle one-note. In fact, I think the best performance might be from an injured Apatosaurus, whose head is one of several animatronic effects in the film.
As villain, D’Onofrio goes from arms-akimbo to hand-behind-back to arms-crossed. And remember that producer Steven Spielberg has mused about casting Pratt in a new Indiana Jones movie. Clad in a leather vest and constantly rolling under gates just before they slam shut, Pratt’s performance is less a role than a screen test for Indy V.
Howard, meanwhile, gets the cliché girlie role, in a summer that has delivered great, original female parts in Mad Max, Spy and (one presumes) the upcoming Terminator Genisys. Told by Pratt’s character that she won’t survive in the jungle, her response is to rip off her blouse. Pratt looks her up and down and declares: “Just like taking a stroll through the woods — 65 million years ago.” But to be fair, the film only sets feminism back about 50 years.
But you don’t go to Jurassic World for gender politics — or for scientific accuracy. For starters, given the types of dinosaurs on display, it should really be called Cretaceous World. You go to see a giant mosasaur devour a shark, a summer blockbuster metaphor if ever there was one. You go for the breathtaking shot of Indominus popping out of the jungle foliage like a de-camouflaging octopus.
And you go because you remember great dinosaur movies of yore, not least the 1993 original, which gets a nice homage when some of the characters stumble into an abandoned area of the park. It’s a bit like finding a decommissioned Disney ride at the bottom of a mine shaft. There’s also a View-Master image in the opening scene that you’d do well to remember.
Spielberg directed Jurassic Park and the first of its two lacklustre sequels. He hands the keys to this one to the relatively untested Colin Trevorrow, whose only other feature was the low-budget Safety Not Guaranteed.
The neophyte handles things nicely, mixing tension and comic moments judiciously. One suspects Spielberg had his ear via Bluetooth — ironic given that, in the movie, the park has plot-advancingly horrible cellphone reception. Honestly, couldn’t they have put some towers atop those giant animal pens?
Behind the pseudo-science and bone-crunching sound effects, however, Jurassic World comes down to a fairly simple battle of loyalty and wits — and guns, tranquillizers, bazookas, flares, teeth, claws, armoured tails, helicopters, velociraptors, motorcycles, etc. It’s the epitome of a summer popcorn movie. And your summer starts here.