Reviewed in Full: Jurassic World

Jurassic World pretends that earlier sequels Lost World and III didn't happen. Still, it seems that every time a billionaire wants to resurrect a dinosaur for spectator sport, something goes awry and soon, as Jeff Goldblum says in Lost World, it all seems like a good idea at first, and then there's running, and screaming. This time around the sheen has dimmed on the idea of Jurassic Park after 10 years in operation since the first film and so to increase foot traffic the park's corporate guides have bred a new dinosaur, one combining the skills, traits, and looks of various other dinosaurs and creatures. Naturally, it gets loose on the island, where visitors are trapped. Only one man can save them all, and he is Owen Grady (TV's Chris Pratt), who grabs his motorcycle and his three trained Velociraptors and heads into the jungle. Also in the cast are the scenery-consuming Vincent D'Onofrio as the command-central guy and the bland Bryce Dallas Howard as the corporate shill who more or less brings about all the chaos.

Jurassic World is directed by Colin Trevorrow, who did the small-scale Seattle-based indie film Safety Not Guaranteed and on paper he is an unlikely candidate for epical sci-fi fun in the Jurassic vein, and it took four writers to concoct this simple, derivative plot, a blend of The Most Dangerous Game and the nightmare on Norway's Utøya Island. Yet the film works. In fact, it works better than all the other Jurassic movies put together. What a recent re-viewing of the earlier films reveals is that they are slow, ponderous tales livened up, eventually, by suspense set pieces, set in cars, trailers, and kitchens. Outside of that, they are self-indulgent and over-informative without being realistic in a '70s movie sense, that level of surface documented reality. The over-authored plot gives equal weight to all its elements, working as a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The Internet meme clinging to the film is that the Howard character is a sexist fantasy, but this character, running across the island in her tailored suit and high heels, is a cunning realization on the part of the filmmakers that she is exactly the kind of character that mainstream American women like to see get a comeuppance. These movies are market researched to death, and there are no longer any psychological secrets in America. And of course, the special effects are the best ever.