Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom lacks bite

TWENTY-FIVE years since the awesome original Jurassic Park, the franchise is back with a fifth instalment. Skip it.

WHEN Jurassic Park premiered 25 years ago this month, it terrified and thrilled audiences with its awesome visual effects, a heart-thumping story and that fearsome T-Rex. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom will not be able to say the same thing.

Now, to a jaded audience used to cinema’s scare tactics, the franchise has a lot less bite. As the fifth instalment, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom isn’t so much gripping as passable — a silhouette of jagged teeth just isn’t as effective anymore, especially when you’ve seen it before in four previous Jurassic movies.

If you choose to mindlessly enjoy Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and let it take you along for an unquestioning ride, you can. But that’s only if you can forgive the movie’s many glaring plotholes or the fact it’s far too concerned with setting up the next sequel rather than resolving the film you’ve already paid to watch.

Set a few years after Jurassic World, the doomed theme park has now been abandoned with the dinosaurs free to roam the island. But the creatures are in peril with the island’s volcano gearing up to blow, an extinction-level event for the giant beasts.

Despite barely surviving her sojourn on Isla Nublar last time around, former park manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is now a dinosaur-rights activist and lover of sensible shoes, devoting her energies to saving the creatures from a lava-inflicted death.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom lacks bite (Universal Pictures via AP)

When she’s contacted by John Hammond’s former science partner Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) with a proposal to rescue the beasts, she jumps at the chance to return, dragooning trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) in the process.

Without giving away the exact wheres and hows, the dinosaurs and the group of humans, which includes two new characters Franklin (Justice Smith) and Zia (Daniella Pineda), are transported from the island to Lockwood’s Northern California mansion, a house that could easily be the setting for the next Cluedo mystery — if you see an errant candlestick in the library, run.

While it’s a relief the action moved off the island (especially as Jurassic World three years earlier felt very much like an inferior version of the original 1993 film by staying on it), the move is also why Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ultimately feels like three different movies. It starts out as a creature feature that morphs into a James Bond caper with one-dimensional villains, then a haunted house horror that at times is as silly as a Richie Rich adventure. And its climax seems to have been borrowed from the Paddington movie.

Maybe don’t take your eight-year-old to see this (Universal Pictures via AP)

Director J.A. Bayona previously made A Monster Calls and he’s clearly comfortable with that genre’s imagery, some of which he deploys here with style. The movie also manages to change your perception of the dinosaurs from terrifying creatures trying to eat you to a species worth empathising with and saving (as long as they’re not some Frankenstein-ian monster).

Plus, there’s a delightful Jeff Goldblum cameo — delightful because it’s Goldblum, not what he’s doing in the movie which is thankless bordering on illogical.

But it’s not enough. It’s the humans you start to care less and less about. Howard and Pratt are both fine action leads and they have decent chemistry but the franchise has exhausted our good will — it’s just not bringing anything new to be invested in. Déjà vu has well and truly set in.

There’s one development that could bear fruit but the movie left it dangling, clearly needing a hook for the next chapter (already announced to hit cinemas in 2021) to get you back in the theatre. It’s an unsatisfying ending and it’s a cynical one. Maybe we should know better than to expect more from a multibillion-dollar franchise.

Rating: ★★½

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is in cinemas from Thursday, June 21.

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