Film review- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

I tell you what they didn’t half waste Jeff Goldblum.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the sequel to the 2015 megahit which was itself the fourth in the Jurassic Park franchise. In this film, the heroes need to evacuate dinosaurs from an exploding island and get them to a safe haven. And obviously, at some stage, some dinosaurs do a spot of rampaging.

So: the good. This movie has one of the most abrupt gear changes I’ve seen in recent years according to tone. Somewhere near the halfway point the whole focus shifts and from there the film is a lot more enjoyable. There’s an almost slasher/horror vibe to it and it’s refreshingly different. I’m not going to claim it achieves any form of legitimate tension but from purely a pulpy visual perspective I appreciated the change of pace. Think more the velociraptor scenes from Jurassic Park than the behemoth battles of Jurassic World.

Oh, and I guess the effects are good. But come on, it’s a $170 million movie. Imagine if they weren’t.

And now the bad. As mentioned, the fact they’re carting Jeff Goldblum around as a marketing strategy is, in my opinion, simply dishonest. Is he in the movie? Technically yes but selling it as his heroes return to the franchise is a flat-out lie. He’s isolated from any other characters and has about 90 seconds of screen time.

Speaking of characters, I sort of hate them all. I didn’t mind Chris Pratt in the last film but in this one I found his macho quips to be weirdly unlikable for an actor I usually enjoy. And for some godforsaken reason, they felt that they needed to add in two comic relief characters who couldn’t have been more annoying if they’d dressed as Jar-Jar Binks. These two feature heavily in the first half which is mainly why the second half is so much better. Mind you, they quickly replace them with a frustrating child so you don’t go too long without irritation. All I’m saying is that if I half want all the main characters to be eaten, there’s something wrong here.

The plot is nonsensical and the actions of the characters make zero sense within its context. The editing is head-shakingly bizarre while the dialogue is paint-by-numbers and predictable. There’s a third-act twist that’s not a twist because it doesn’t affect the plot at all. It’s not the worst movie I’ve ever seen but it wasn’t even the best I watched that day.

I bet they’ll pay Sam Neill $15 million to show up in the next one.