Jurassic World.

I’m putting it out there real quick; I went into Jurassic World with relatively very low expectations. I wasn’t expecting Oscar worthy cinema, and after being fed about 90% of the movies plot from the trailers I was expecting this to succumb to the same fate as the 4th Transformers movie; commercially successful, whilst being utterly terrible. 

I love terrible films though, so it was kind of a win-win. And I won, but not the way I thought. It was actually really surprised with just how much I enjoyed Jurassic world. 

We’ve seen the previous films so you know what happens, and if you haven’t then shame on you. This 4th Jurassic outing follows the same kind of path, only this time instead of T-Rex theres a GM(Genetically-Mutated)-Rex on the loose. Cue Motorbike-ridin’, Indiana-Jones-lookin’, Velociraptor-trainin’ golden boy of the moment Chris Pratt, to save the day.

It falls into almost every single action movie trope, leaving every scene completely predictable, or rather it would be if you hadn’t seen the trailer, but Pratt pulls most of it off well. The real thing that makes it all so fun is the CGI. 

It’s like really bloody stunning actually. The whole thing is so visually impressive you forgive it for it’s shortcomings in story and actual substance. Like Mad Max, it had me leaving the cinema wishing I hadn’t been so stingey and just gone to see it in 3D, because it was clearly made with 3D cinema goers in mind.

There are a two howling criticisms that I need to address, though:

Firstly, where are all the women?! There are literally four women that speak during the entire 2 hours. Only one of these given any prominent screen time and that’s just to be the damsel in distress, thorn in Pratt’s side and (spoiler) eventually snog him. 

It seemed so lazy to completely omit any other female leads, and particularly strange coming off the back of watching Mad Max: Fury Road, which had an abundance of really excellent women. In fact Mad Max was refreshing in that a typically “blokey” movie had such strong female characters driving the action; whilst Jurassic World as a family film, made it’s absence of women even more noticeable.

The next is a scene in which one of the young boys tells his older brother that their parents are getting a divorce. It happens on a monorail, and the kid cries for a while, then the whole thing is forgotten about and never mentioned again. The whole scene is (I think) supposed to show how the brothers relationship is pretty shitty, while also demonstrating the younger brother is somewhere on the Autism spectrum. But the whole thing felt forced and just plain weird. In fact it was bizarrely reminiscent of this scene in Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. 

I must also mention that Jake Johnson is (as usual) fantastic and hilarious in his small role, that I can imagine will be amped up considerably in the (inevitable) sequel.

So to summarise-

Good: CGI, Jake Johnson, fun.

Bad: Cliches galore, lack of worthwhile females, could do with more swearing.