Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

2018 sequel to a reboot or maybe a sequel to a sequel's sequel

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Dinosaurs! Chris Pratt!

All a blockbuster really needs anymore is a bunch of CGI dinosaurs and the charming Chris Pratt's dimples. My expectations for this were not high since 2015's Jurassic World bored me to literal tears, and I'm not even sure why I bothered to see this. However, it was two dumb hours of dumb entertainment, and dumb me was pleasantly surprised that it hooked me and kept my interest.

It really is dumb though. I've often admitted that I don't really understand how science works, but I'm fairly confident in saying that the people behind this movie don't understand how science works either. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a movie that requires you to not only suspend disbelief but also suspend disbelief at how much you're suspending disbelief. It's goofy movie science, the kind where the writers figured just sneaking a bunch of phrases that sound vaguely scientific will be enough for moviegoers, most of whom probably just decided to see the movie because they wanted to enjoy the comfortable chairs and the air conditioning anyway. It requires you to stop paying attention to the action sequences and imagine a world where armies, instead of using giant bombs that can flatten cities, use genetically-created dino-soldiers instead. The credits roll and you're still shaking your head at the implausibility that the characters who survive this actually survived this. There will be eye rolls, ladies and gentlemen. There will be eye rolls.

Not all of the characters survive this. The bad guys--and I don't think this is a spoiler because it's the same thing that happens in all these dinosaur movies--get what they deserve, and director J.A. Bayona and co-writers Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow seem to relish those deaths. There's one great (and dumb) scene where a dinosaur is bulldozing his way through a crowd of well-dressed people, and the way they're shown being flung around made me laugh a little. Whether they're being chomped in a single bite, torn to pieces, or stomped to death, these people really know how to show a blockbuster-hungry audience the consequences of being murderous or just plain greedy or overly ambitious. Or just underappreciative of the power of extinct animals.

This is really a movie about the set pieces, and there are some good ones. In fact, once the characters arrive on whatever fictional island the other movies took place on, this is almost relentless dinosaur bombast. An active volcano and carnivorous dinosaurs team up to put our heroes in perilous situation after perilous situation, but they survive because the charming Chris Pratt and his dimples can run faster than any human being who has ever run before. The movie then leaves that island, and we get to see the dinosaurs wreak havoc in much different setting that gives the whole thing a refreshing novelty.

The CGI dinosaurs don't always look great. They look best in the darkness and/or rain. Bryce Dallas Howard's character, during one of the moments where things slow down, reminisces about the first time she saw a dinosaur, the novelty of the experience and how it made her believe. The first Jurassic Park movie managed to do that for audiences. That novelty is gone. There are moments when there are probably twenty dinosaurs on the screen at the same time, but the child within me just shrugged. The excitement in this is seeing those dinosaurs in new ways, and the real special effects splendor is how the CGI blends with the settings. There's a clever use of shadows in this movie, and I liked how the settings were destroyed in this. Giving the CGI creations a very real impact on the mansion they're galumphing through made the whole dumb sequence of events feel a little more real, even as things fall into place at just the right moments in the most unrealistic ways imaginable.

You imagine actual human beings sitting around writing this and thinking, "There's no way the audience is going to buy this, right? Oh well, let's do it anyway."

The charming Chris Pratt and his band of good guys are all likable but generic characters. I was more excited about seeing the great Toby Jones. He's just as good as it gets. Ted Levine is given a stock tough guy to play, and if you've seen any movie at all, you'll know exactly what his intentions are and what will eventually happen to his character the moment you see him. And there's Jeff Goldblum in another small 2018 summer movie role. It seems he agreed to be in this only if he didn't have to shave and could sit down for all of his scenes and if the shooting schedule didn't interfere with the filming of his apartment commercials.

This is likely the second best of these Jurassic movies although I still can't remember if I've seen the third Jurassic Park movie. And I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually interested in a third installment in this dumb rebooted series. The semi-cliffhanger this one ends with looks like more of an opportunity for the franchise to take its CGI dinosaurs to places they've never been before and further explain just whose kingdom is falling.

And here's hoping for a sex scene with the charming Chris Pratt and his dinosaur Blue. I can't be the only one who thinks that's a terrific idea, right? Fan fiction likely already exists. I mean, the next trilogy can be about their offspring, right? I think we've already moved far away from Crichton's books, so they might as well start using some of the dinosaur erotica you can purchase through Amazon as source material.