Review of Jurassic World (2015) by Odjento — 02 Jul 2015

Jurassic World is not a failure, but it is an overall disappointment. The films writing is pretty poor with it trying to create interesting characters but failing on the majority of them making them unlikable and one dimensional. Praise for Chris Pratt’s character though, he’s a lot of fun. The main (unlikable) characters come forth like this; Gray being the annoying kid that is constantly running around spouting out his dinosaur facts, Zach being simply a bit of a dick of a character where we find out at the start he has a girlfriend but preys on every other girl he sees while also having his little brother to make him admirable even though there seems like a serious lack of chemistry between them, Claire being played rather well at times by Bryce Dallas Howard but coming across as an idiotic, emotionless person who just seems rather clueless and makes decisions that shouldn’t be redeemed by saving her nephews and kissing Pratt, and then finally there is Hoskins. Hoskins is the one dimensional villain of (you guessed it) ingen that is constantly showing why he is a bad person. Plain plain plain.

Now however to the film. The film has its moments of interesting action sequences and dialogue (one instance talking about the psychology of deprivation) but they do not amount to even probably about half the running time. Pratt’s character Owen Grady does have the best parts and he plays his character well in the scenes he’s in making the film enjoyable for just his screen time. However, the film never fully builds up appropriately, rushing straight into Jurassic World and then delivering the news of the genetically modified hybrid. The idea for why they were doing it was interesting but the choices of what they made it of just seems idiotic.

The film later slides down into a bundle of events that the Indominus Rex causes without really making the most of what the scenes could be, and then the film takes an odd change it direction for the end by changing the ending of the film into a monster brawl flick, like a Godzilla movie. It seemed like a pretty ridiculous ending.

Then, with not only the writing of some dialogue but the direction and acting of some scenes, you can’t help but notice this film is ridiculously cheesy at moments. Some scenes I thought were cringe worthy and just forced, which obviously shows a lack of thought when writing the script and just trying to get all the classic Hollywood blockbuster tropes in without originality.

Now not all was bad about the film. Like I say, Chris Pratt was awesome - and this film acts as stellar evidence and test footage for why he should be the new Indiana Jones – and there our also plenty of nice little call backs to the original films, but some scenes were thought out in what they represent. Trevorrow did a nice job of colour scheming certain scenes, which was a nice subtle touch, with the warmer and darker colours (Red and Black) representing the old, and the colder and lighter colours (blue and white) representing the new. It was a small thing, but it was quite nice to witness if you noticed it.

Overall, the film is maybe worth the money for a film to buy on dvd once it gets cheaper, but not full admission ticket price. It’s not bad, but definitely not good. You will get enjoyment out of this, and it is better than Jurassic Park 3 so no worries there.