Review of Jurassic World (2015) by Agdune — 15 Jun 2015

I'm certainly of mixed opinion on this one. With a messy story that doesn't quite work (a last-minute re-write of some major plot points, was my first guess), an unimaginative screenplay and lazy directing, this movie is about as good as... well, it's about as good as Birdemic, but with nicer graphics. It's hilarious.

...It's not meant to be hilarious, but my word, I haven't enjoyed a movie this much since Plan 9 from Outer Space. The bulk of the movie is, obviously, visually impressive. It's lovely to look at... but then, so are most big budget movies lately, so that's hardly a passing mark on its own. The story and screenplay are a slapped together series of brain farts that make you wonder what the selection process for professional movie writers must be; a dartboard, perhaps? A lottery system? I don't really mean to be harsh, but let's be honest: the writing is TERRIBLE. It's the only movie I've ever explicitly watched the credits for in order to see who was responsible for the screenplay.

No single element of the writing is stand-out 'look at this' bad. Rather, it's as if it was written by a teenager with some raw talent, but no self-awareness or experience. Mistakes and blunders come one after the other, making an overall effect that any B movie lover can appreciate: it's a stupidly wonderful mish-mash of cliches, lazy directing and stupid, badly thought-out ideas that must've seemed great in the early brainstorming and storyboarding stages, but which the staff were woefully incapable of ever executing in any competent manner. Aborted character arcs abound, illogical setpieces and bizzare events make it impossible to take the story seriously or feel invested in any of the characters.

The most glaring story component is that last-minute re-write that I suspect (perhaps a re-write is common knowledge to people who followed the movie's production; I'm not one of them), which obviously left a lot of lose ends in the story: 'serious business' character development arcs are raised by multiple characters, obviously intended to be parts of a larger story, however due to what must've been a re-shuffle of characters, the arcs are broken and don't fit in to the final story whatsoever, and in fact make some characters appear unstable and illogical, as they are now having 'serious business' moments about a matter that's never actually addressed in the movie, or which no longer fits with the revised script. Seeing the children's mother have a breakdown because her sister wasn't spending time with the boys was amazing. Because -again- it made no sense. Clearly, the story was intended to be a broken family bonding over the dramatic events of the movie, but instead, we have... well. A mess with no real conclusion. The boys consternation over their parents looming divorce? Well, never mind that, Dinosaur attack! Park manager worrying about low attendance numbers and declining profits? Those tens of thousands of people crowding every square metre of the shiny and new-looking park don't matter, because dinosaurs! Whoo! Look, Guest appearance by Jimmy Fallon doing... slapstick? Uh... Dinosaurs, whoo! Millitary shenanigans and corruption, but let's not even try to finish that arc, instead let's have rolling balls of CGI magic! Whoo!

It's just a series of silly, pretty looking events that happened on an island with suicidal attack-dinosaurs, mustache-twirling military contractors, theme parks with no emergency procedures, annoying kids with no purpose in the story, and Chris Pratt trying to make the most of his boring, cliche macho-guy lines.

A solid B movie experience.