Director: Colin Trevorrow

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty Simpkins, Judy Greer, Vincent D’Onofrio, Irrfan Khan, Nick Robinson, Jake Johnson, Omar Sy, BD Wong, Lauren Lapkus, Katie McGrath

Rating: 12A

Running Time: 124 mins

Release Date: June 12th, 2015

Dinosaurs are not interesting anymore. Back in 1993 when JURASSIC PARK came out, the film utilized breathtaking new special effects and animatronics to bring its dinosaurs to life, creating a world where you believed, even for a second, that dinosaurs walked the earth again. But 22 years is a long time and CGI has advanced so far that films can now blow up the whole world or whisk us away to spend time on alien planets. How could dinosaurs, the fossils of the film world, possibly compete? Colin Trevorrow has the best possible answer; everything is bigger and better.

The film opens with JURASSIC WORLD as a real, tourist heavy attraction. Having been open since 2005, the park needs something to boost its numbers, the suits in charge, including Bryce Dallas Howards Claire, are looking to bring a new attraction to the part, one that their scientists have been working on in the lab, and it’s bigger, stronger and more intelligent than anything they already have. Trevorrow gives the audience enough time to get to know the cast before the inevitable happens and the new dinosaur escapes, while the characters are all stock types who we’ve seen a thousand times before; Howard is a woman dedicated to her work and doesn’t even know her own nephews ages, Chris Pratt‘s Owen is the cool guy who respects the dinosaurs and Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson are the bickering brothers who visit the island, everyone is well cast and blend well together, even if every single characters development is entirely obvious from the beginning of the film.

But you don’t want to spend two hours with a group of characters just admiring a park and JURASSIC WORLD delivers on the dinosaur mayhem. The Indominus Rex, the parks latest attraction, is a sight to behold – its design is fantastic and certainly generates a feeling of terror. The film has some well developed, and thanks to Trevorrow, well staged set pieces, the standout being a pterodactyl attack and the Indominus Rex’s escape from it’s cage. Trevorrow was a risky choice, the indie director only has one feature film to his name, while that was the brilliant SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED it wasn’t exactly a calling card for a film like this. However, Steven Spielberg picked Trevorrow for the film and he was right to do so, the dinosaur attacks are chaotic but comprehensible and surprisingly brutal, some of the characters demises in the film are tough, especially for a 12A film. Trevorrow injects the film with flair and style, crafting a loving ode to the original but also cementing his own style.

When the film does stumble it’s down to some overuse of cliches and story beats that it has to get through, mainly stemming from Vincent D’Onofrio‘s role as an antagonistic military man hoping to profit from the dinosaur chaos, he’s at odds with the rest of the film and feels slightly unnecessary. The ever reliable Chris Pratt is given an empty vacuum of a character, Owen, who only exists to look like a bad ass and act like, well, Chris Pratt, but he does it so well. The real surprise is Dallas Howard, who gets a lot of great moments to shine and gives Claire a real hardworking edge to her character, the film doesn’t stick her in a room and lets Pratt run around the jungle and save the day, instead Claire is more or less the main protagonist.

The scientists in JURASSIC WORLD created a new dinosaur out of greed and a need to prove to people that dinosaurs are still relevant and the filmmakers could have gone the same way with the film, no one asked for a Jurassic sequel, especially after two below average entries, but Trevorrow has a love for the series that is prevalent in every frame and has made a true sequel to a widely loved film, proving that not only are dinosaurs still relevant but that they are here to stay.

Verdict

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