By Brett Blake JURASSIC WORLD is far and away the best movie in the franchise since the iconic, original JURASSIC PARK (and that is coming from someone who’s an avowed and avid defender of THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK). There is a sense of giddy fun, of youthful exuberance that permeates every frame of what director Colin Trevorrow has created here that - even as it doesn’t reach the untouchable heights of the original - still feels respectfully of-a-piece with that first movie. It is not perfect, and it may fall victim to the too-lofty expectations of some audience members, but it is an enormously exciting time at the cinema. Picking up 22 years after the events of JURASSIC PARK, WORLD opens with John Hammond’s dream finally a reality: a fully-functional, populated, bustling dinosaur theme park featuring rides, experiences, shopping, dining, and lodging. Into this scenario come two brothers, Gray (Ty Simpkins) and Zach (Nick Robinson), on a weekend visit to see their aunt Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), one of the park’s chief administrators and the overseer of a project to create a genetic hybrid dinosuar - the sternly-named Indominus Rex - to generate a bump in attendance. As often happens when scientists overstep their bounds, the Indominus Rex is much more dangerous than anticipated, and when it escapes, Claire must call upon the services of Owen (Chris Pratt), the park’s Velociraptor wrangler, to help her rescue her nephews, track down the dinosaur on the loose, and keep the park guests from (for lack of a better phrase) being eaten. The storyline exists primarily as an excuse to deliver some dinosaur mayhem (and there certainly is a lot of that in the movie), but that is not to say it’s thin to the point of being a problem. The narrative chugs along at a nice pace, and it’s packed with setpieces, most of which are a fantastic amount of fun. Director Trevorrow - formerly the most indie of indie directors - proves adept at staging thrilling and suspenseful action beats, and there are moments in here (particularly the first few sequences involving the I-Rex and its escape from containment) that feel completely worthy of the action standard set by Steven Spielberg on the original film; there’s a particularly striking bit involving a hapless victim being plucked up from the ground to above tree-level, from which a flurry of leaves and blood rain down that should make any self-respecting monster movie fan grin. And that’s even before we even get to the finale, which is crowd-pleasing, rousing, and cheer-worthy in the best way possible, and features some legitimately amazing interaction between digital dinosaurs, real actors, and real sets that are being crushed, smashed, burned, and otherwise destroyed. Trevorrow and the filmmakers also do a great job of walking the very fine line between giving the dinosaurs personalities (especially the raptors Chris Pratt’s Owen is training) and making them goofy or anthropomorphized. Just as in JURASSIC PARK, these creatures feel (mostly) like real animals, with the Indominus Rex being the obvious exception as it’s something of a test tube Frankenstein Monster, necessitating a characterization that’s a bit more extreme. There could have perhaps been a few more species featured, but that’s little more than a nitpick. Trevorrow also makes Jurassic World feel like a distinct and believable theme park; everything from the production design to the omnipresent corporate sponsorships is on-point, and strongly reminds one of the Disney and Universal parks around the world. Chris Pratt as Owen again demonstrates (if GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY wasn’t proof enough) that he’s the real deal, a charismatic screen presence capable of handling straight action and humor in equal measure, and he’s a cool character type we haven’t seen in the franchise up to this point. For as much as the marketing has been focused on Pratt, the movie’s strongest character (certainly from an arc standpoint) is Bryce Dallas Howard's Claire; it’s a standard character progression she undergoes, but Howard sells the hell out of it, and is every bit as heroic a figure as Pratt is by the end of the movie. Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson do fine work as a pair of shockingly un-annoying kids, and their interaction is believably brotherly. The supporting cast is kind of a Murderers’ Row of neat character actors, and having people like Vincent D’Onofrio, Irrfan Khan, Judy Greer, and Jake Johnson show up goes a long way towards giving distinctive personality to characters that - on the page - might be somewhat thinly drawn. D’Onofrio is clearly having a blast as the closest the story has to an antagonist, while Johnson plays the best kind of comic relief: one that doesn’t play to the cheap seats and whose humor comes from character moments rather than situations. One of the movie’s other key components is the music. John Williams’ score for the first JURASSIC PARK remains one of his most recognizable, and it casts a very long shadow. Luckily, JURASSIC WORLD has Michael Giacchino on board, and he rises to the occasion. His score respectfully doffs its hat at the Williams themes - which are quoted at several points - but Giacchino mostly blazes his own trail with themes both emotional and thrilling (one cue, underscoring Owen and his team of Velociraptors riding into battle, so to speak, boarders on swashbuckling) and action/suspense writing that is intense and sinister. But what of the dinosaur effects? Here’s where things get a little tricky. As good as the effects are (and they are), they're not as effective as those found in the original. On one level playing the comparison game of PARK to WORLD is unfair. The original exists for me with the golden hues of nostalgia surrounding it; when I saw JURASSIC PARK at age 6, the dinosaurs in that movie were completely real to me, and that perception still colors the way I think about the effects of that film to this day. However, even taking that into account, and trying to be as objective as possible, the digital effects in JURASSIC WORLD do not immediately stand out as being as impactful as those in the original movie, and I think a huge part of that has to do with the almost-complete lack of physical, animatronic dinosaurs. In the first movie, there are more shots of animatronic puppets than there are shots of CGI dinos, and it is the blend of those two techniques (a revolutionary blend at the time) that allows the effects work of JURASSIC PARK as a whole to still hold up to scrutiny, even to this day. At best, there are maybe six or seven shots of animatronic dinosaurs in JURASSIC WORLD (mostly in one - tremendous and surprisingly moving - scene), and while the CGI used to pick up the slack is very good, the movie as a whole lacks that monumental feeling of verisimilitude that made the original movie’s dinosaurs so convincing. In one sense, that’s symptomatic of the movie as a whole. Let’s get real, here. JURASSIC WORLD had no chance of matching the awe-inspiring impact or the intangible, spine-tingling “magic” of JURASSIC PARK, no matter how good a film it was. So those out there requiring this movie to equal its predecessor in order to be considered a success are surely going to be in for a disappointing ride. It would be best for all parties concerned to appreciate JURASSIC WORLD for what it is: a monster movie romp with just enough heart to feel like a worthy successor to the classic original, while also feeling almost entirely like its own thing. It is certainly a fun film, an above average blockbuster, and the best JURASSIC PARK sequel. That’s all it is though, and for some, I fear that won’t be enough. Or perhaps I’m not giving fans enough credit; after all, you will not find a bigger fan of JURASSIC PARK than I am, and I had a great time with JURASSIC WORLD.
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