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“Jurassic World Rebirth”

Universal Pictures

Directed by Gareth Edwards

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Audrina Miranda, David Iacono, Philippine Velge and Manuel Garcia-Ruffo

Rated PG-13

 

2 ½ Stars

 

The original “Jurassic Park” is one of my favorite movies of all time. I think it’s the perfect combination of great storytelling, impressive technology and a filmmaker at the top of his game.

I mention this because my love for the original movie is both a blessing and a curse. Whenever there’s a new “Jurassic Park” sequel, I am automatically excited about taking another trip to a place where we will get to see those awesome dinosaur special effects. Then again, I worry that I will be disappointed by yet another movie that fails to live up to the standards set by Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece.

So perhaps I’m not being fair to the seventh movie in the franchise, “Jurassic World Rebirth,” which arrives in theaters just in time for the long Independence Day weekend. Once again, hope sprang eternal as I walked into the theater. Once again, I was disappointed by an okay, but just okay entry into the franchise.

Scarlett Johansson stars in this latest film, playing a mercenary who is hired to help a scientist (Jonathan Bailey) gather dinosaur DNA for a pharmaceutical lab. She assembles a team, including a boat captain (Mahershala Ali) and a couple of soldiers of fortune.

Along the way they run into a man (Manuel Garcia-Ruffo) who is sailing across the ocean with his family when something attacks his boat. The family survives the attack, and they are rescued by the mercenaries. To their dismay, they find that they are now sailing towards an island that is the home of the monsters that almost killed them the day before.

That’s a pretty good set up. We have a nice mix of soldiers and civilians who are quickly stranded on the island. Things progress as you would expect from that point on, with our heroes being menaced and occasionally killed by the various dinosaurs that have survived.

A quick look at your watch will reveal that we are nearly a third of the way into the movie before we get any of that sweet dino action. This is a film that feels the need to give us a lot of character backstory before the action arrives. With apologies to Johansson and the rest of the cast, I really didn’t care about any of these characters or their motivations.

The whole point of this franchise is seeing the dinosaurs brought back to life. They do eventually show up and many of the action sequences are quite thrilling. The problem is that the filmmakers have decided that the dinosaurs from the original movie are no longer big enough to anchor a summer blockbuster. Instead, we learn that scientists have been genetically modifying dinosaurs.

That’s right: Mutant Dinosaurs!

So, instead of those wimpy velociraptors we get a version of them with wings. Instead of a puny T-Rex we get an even bigger monstrosity that looks like it has been ripped out of a Godzilla movie. Thanks to state-of-the-art computer animation, the new dinosaurs look very photorealistic, but they are so embellished that they just don’t feel plausibly realistic any longer.

The irony is that my favorite moments in this movie come from a T-Rex attack sequence and a quick moment when two velociraptors are stalking one of the humans. These moments came close to recapturing the thrill of the original movie. The rest of the movie doesn’t come nearly as close.

I know that’s not fair to this franchise. The sequels still have great special effects and exciting action sequences, but the movie just doesn’t measure up to my hopes and expectations. Perhaps it’s time for this franchise to go back to the basics by giving us some OG dinosaurs and a couple of likable humans trying to survive. Maybe then we could recapture the lost magic of the original “Jurassic Park.”

 

Movie reviews by Sean, “The Movie Guy,” are published each week in The Port Arthur News and the Orange Leader. Sean welcomes your comments via email at sean@seanthemovieguy.com You can get more of Sean’s reviews by subscribing to the 2 Movie Guys podcast.