Starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, BD Wong, Omar Sy, Campbell Scott. Written by Emily Carmichael and Colin Trevorrow, based on a story by Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow and directed by Colin Trevorrow. Budget $185 million. Running time 146 minutes.
The absolutely best thing in the movie happens before the film even begins, when a dinosaur centric trailer for the new Minions movie is screened. After that, it's downhill all the way.
This is a film with absolutely zero plot or story, which makes this part of the review, the plot synopsis, quite easy to write. The movie sees a bunch of characters run around a lot, and do stuff while dinosaurs menace them but only kill characters we've never seen before, before a showdown in a deserted hi-tech base. Avoiding the need for a proper story, don't believe the hype that the credits would have you believe that somehow this film took four people to write. From the look of things all they did was to sit in a room and using crayons and the back of used envelopes make a list of their favourite bits from the past five films and then tried to piece them together in some sort of order.
Actually this film starts off quite promisingly, well the first 10 to 15 minutes anyway, with a quick view of what the world looks like with dinosaurs living among us, a dinosaur wrangling chase, followed by a character from the last film, who was a clone, recreating a scene from the from every film where everyone looks up in awe as big dinosaurs stroll past. Then there's a bit with Blue, the intelligent Raptor from the last two films in the forest, before you're confronted by something genuinely chilling, a swarm of dinosaur locus! And you find yourself thinking, 'hey, this might be good!'
Trust me it isn't.
Because after that this is downhill all the way, and it's not downhill in a sort of slow acceleration until terminal velocity is achieved! NO SIRRE! It's a rocket propelled sledge mounted at the top of Mount Everest and pointed down!
Three separate story threads slightly diverge before coming back together in a showdown so corny, cliched and signposted that not only will you groan out loud, you'll shout abuse at the screen. I know I did.
This film does away with dialogue or plot in favour of coincidence and 'phew, that was lucky', moments. Characters suddenly find themselves exactly where they need to be to move on to the next plot point, at one point in this 'film' two of our heroes, there are eight in total, are told how to find the exact place they're looking for and how much time they'll have to do the heroic thing they need to do.
Look, I could happily waste 10,000 words listing how lazy, bland, and staggering stupid this film is, but what's the point?
Truth be told, I haven't enjoyed the Jurassic Park movies, sure the first one was good, but that's because it's the first and has a genius making it, but this one is just a two-tonne, cash dinosaur. Young kids, will probably love it, cos you know, dinosaurs. The rest of us will just sit there and wonder if you remembered to turn the gas off when you left the house.
My son, wisely refused to come with the rest of us to see this and by doing so missed out on the best part of the evening – sitting in bar afterwards laughing at it and slagging off just how shit this shit-filled, shitty shitfest is.
Hooray! Another crappy franchise is dead! Long live the next crappy franchise!
3/10
No comments:
Post a Comment
All comments, unless they're how to make money working from home, are gratefully received.