“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” Movie Review

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the direct sequel to 2015’s Jurassic World, as well as the fifth movie in the Jurassic Park franchise. Directing duties have shifted from Colin Trevorrow to A Monster Calls director J.A. Bayona, and this installment stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt once again as Claire (in a character shift from amusement park money-maker to dinosaur-rights activist) and Owen, the “action-hero-man” of the franchise whose character never shifts at all. Claire has been working tirelessly to save the dinosaurs from the active volcano island of Isla Nublar, arguing that they should be given the same rights as other animals due to their being living creatures. After the last film’s events, however, some of the world’s leading officials are not so sure this is a good idea, since each time mankind has attempted to control or interfere with the world’s natural order, disaster has struck (as evidenced by the failures of now two dinosaur parks). Eventually, both Claire and Owen are put on assignment to carry out a rescue mission to save the dinosaurs (Claire because she knows the park, Owen in order to rescue Blue, the raptor from the last movie). And, what we’re given here is what’s supposed to be a dumb, fun action movie that tries to be more than what it is and fails miserably at it, albeit with more style and grace in its failings than the previous installment.

I’m no keeper of secrets when it comes to movies I like or dislike despite any mass audience opinion to the contrary (love The Witch and Hereditary, dislike The Greatest Showman, Guardians of the Galaxy felt flat, etc.), so most people who have been following my reviews and general movie “thing” for a while know well enough that I didn’t really like the first Jurassic World. Sure, it was mindless entertainment and there were parts about it I enjoyed, but it seemed to take the “mindless” angle a little too much to heart, with a lazy script filled with lazy characters, an overabundance of filmmaking clichés, and what amounted to cardboard cutouts of villains, dialogue, plot progression, or basically anything that wasn’t purely spectacle-driven. In that vein, Fallen Kingdom has a lot of heavy lifting to do in terms of drudging this series back up where it rested after its predecessor was barely on-par with, or better than, The Lost World, but also in establishing J.A. Bayona as a legit director. And, for the most part, it really, truly fails. Luckily, that didn’t bother me as much this time around.

If there’s one thing Bayona can do with the best of them, it’s style and scale. This guy kills it at bringing larger than life visual creatures to screen and legitimately making them, well, larger than life. The sheer scope in Fallen Kingdom (for like the 15 minutes of the first act that they’re on the island at least) is breathtaking, and Bayona’s visual flourishes don’t just paint the dinosaurs as massive, but also majestic. The director’s understanding of scene geography is something to be commended here as well, as it nearly saves the movie from being ultimately worse than the first one. The visual effects have also been much improved on both a wide and a close-up scale. Do they rival the effects in the original Jurassic Park? Well, not really, but they’ve come to closest since to capturing not only the awe these creatures inspire, but the terror as well. The design of the new dino for this one is entirely frightening, and really highlights the “monster” aspect of these animals. (Side note: there was a moment in this film where I did legitimately start to tear up near the end of the first act and you will too, so good job on that one, movie.)

The performances in this film have also improved since last time. Bryce Dallas Howard getting to play a character that’s much less a product of corporate cartoon-isms and more of an at least two-dimensional character with her own agency without having to wear heels the whole time is a good step up, especially since it gives the actress more to do in terms of informing the character. Chris Pratt is also back, and while I wouldn’t say the character improved, his performance did; stripped of all the generic action hero Chris Pratt-isms that informed much of his character in the last film, it’s a lot less annoying to follow him and Howard around, despite the fact that, again, neither of their characters goes through the slightest bit of a personal growth arc, despite legitimate plot points brought up by this installment’s main villain that could have informed that sort of change.

Unfortunately, though, that’s where the positives essentially stop cold. This particular installment may have better style and less ultimately clichés running around (though it keeps the same bad editing), but it swaps decisions that used to be purely annoying for decisions that are purely stupid or forgettable. During the course of the film, especially the first act, it’s posited again and again that if these animals aren’t saved, they’ll go re-extinct, and humanity shouldn’t let that happen (notwithstanding the ecological and societal destruction they’ve already wreaked on their own enclosures and would eventually wreak on the world at large if not kept in an enclosure). Yet despite the number of times this is brought up, no one thinks to address the fact that they can just make more dinosaurs, as was the entire premise for this franchise’s now two series-starting films. They have the technology, they have the know-how, and they’re smart enough the acquire the funding to make more, and this never comes up.

In addition to this, the characters being less annoying apparently also meant stripping them of anything resembling what makes a character in the first place. Yeah, I know I said the performances were better, but that doesn’t make the characters better. It’s as if the writers of the previous film made the clichés and cartoon-ish behavior these people once carried the entire point of the characters in the first place, and without all of that, the characters are left to be deflated versions of what they once were; less annoying, but more underdeveloped.

There’s also a solution reveal to the extinction problem that’s played for what ends up being an insanely predictable twist to the point where one wonders if the characters were deliberately ignoring it just so a movie could happen (the “twist” is in the last trailer but the thing that leads to it is not…for some reason they thought that was a good idea instead of the reverse), but it ends up not only ripping a gaping hole in this film’s plot but in the first Jurassic World’s plot as well. One starts to wonder why they didn’t just go that route in the first place, given what’s meant to at first be this movie’s central conflict.

A lot of this has much more to do with the writing of the film than the production of it post-script, but no one thought to stop and question these glaring plot holes not just within the franchise, but within this entry? It’s entirely lazy writing that’s focused on making dinosaurs this big, philosophical talking point in the beginning (forgetting that they don’t have to be because they’re dinosaurs – that’s cool enough), then just wanting them to be mindless, dumb monsters in the end only for the sake of having an action-oriented finale. Not only does it not ultimately decide what message it wants to send (does it want humanity to not mess with nature or does it want us to campaign for animals rights), I don’t even know if it knows what message it’s trying to send, as the script is so fuddled and messy that there’s no clear emotional thru-line to follow. Oh, and in case you were thinking “yes, we finally get to see Ian Malcolm back in a Jurassic Park movie,” Jeff Goldblum amounts to nothing more than a cameo with the most generic dialogue in the film and none of the humor he brought to his previous appearances in the franchise, for a total screen-time of about 2 minutes, maybe less.

I went into this film not expecting much, given that I didn’t enjoy Bayona’s previous film, nor the previous film in this franchise, and maybe that’s why I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t outright hate this movie. Sure, I wanted to like it, and I was hoping it would be good, but I wasn’t expecting that, so I was likely less disappointed than a lot of my fellow critics or audience members out there. Still, it can’t really be denied that while I personally enjoyed this film more, it is, on as objective of a level as art can be (which is not very, mind you), a worse film than the previous one, and worse than Bayona’s previous work as well. Sure, Jurassic World was mindless entertainment, but even though it did take the mindless part a little too seriously, it was still entertaining even after it was over. This one, while still entertaining (perhaps more so) and rid of the clichés that informed the first one (again, swapping them out for laziness), can’t be bothered to not rip apart at the seams once you’re done watching it. And even as unsurprising as that is, it’s still disappointing.

I’m giving “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” a 5.8/10