It’s impossible to discuss Jurassic World, the large-scale fourth entry in the dinosaur-laden franchise, without acknowledging the T-Rex in the room: Jurassic Park. The 1993 film by Steven Spielberg looms large over this one, not just because of its unshakable place in the modern pop-culture consciousness, but because World’s director and co-writer Colin Trevorrow seems unable or unwilling to move past a meta-commentary, if not slight reworking, of the original’s themes and goals. Some of the time, Jurassic World is too self-aware for its own good, noting how the audiences of 2015 want bigger and badder beasts instead of just regular old dinosaurs. The rest of the time, this film plays like a talented cover band’s version of your favorite song.
The “What if?” possibility at the core of Jurassic World is tantalizing enough: What if, in spite of the disastrous pre-opening in the early 1990s, a theme park off the coast of Costa Rica did open to the worldwide public, wherein they could visit all manner of previously extinct dinosaurs? By the time the film begins, Jurassic World is enough of a household name that it has attracted various sponsors and name-brand coffeehouses (as well as celebrities like Jimmy Fallon to introduce some of its attractions). More than 20,000 people spend a day at the park, watching a Shamu-like water show with a massive dinosaur gobbling up sharks and other beasties for lunch; experiencing an IMAX film about pteranodons; and taking a ride in a gyrosphere next to less harmless dinos.
But mayhem is right around the corner. On one side of the fight, there’s Owen Grady (Chris Pratt, doing his best version of Burt Macklin, Raptor Wrangler), an ex-military man who has formed something of a bond with four velociraptors and knows these dinosaurs are more than just a faceless attraction. On the other is old flame Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), who runs the World’s day-to-day operations and is convinced that the only way to maintain the profit margin is to create more incredible dinos, such as a genetically modified hybrid known as the Indominus Rex. But would you believe that, almost as soon as it’s introduced, the Indominus Rex—a mix of T-Rex and other animals kept under wraps—gets loose of its paddock and begins killing humans and dinosaurs alike? Try to contain your surprise.
Trevorrow and co-writer Derek Connolly (the script is also credited to Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, though their contribution has been publicly diminished of late in interviews) are not without some skill in crafting set pieces. The first moment where Claire’s nephews Zach and Gray (Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins) come face to face with the Indominus Rex is genuinely chilling, and as close as we’re going to get to Spielberg’s genius decision to announce the T-Rex’s impending arrival by showing a glass of water rippling ominously. But there’s very little buildup of that sort or anticipation of any kind in Jurassic World; though the film opens with Zach and Gray leaving their snowy home for the sunny shores of Costa Rica, within a few minutes, not only are they at the park, but the famous John Williams theme is played as they gaze awestruck at their surroundings. We are far, far away from the dinosaurs being kept in the shadows by the director for maximum impact. Trevorrow makes the leap from an indie film like Safety Not Guaranteed to the world of big-budget blockbusters decently enough, but he can’t escape the trap of falling into anonymity behind the director’s chair in a CGI-heavy affair like this. Jurassic Park was driven by its director; Jurassic World is driven by its effects.
No doubt, Jurassic World will continue Chris Pratt’s ascendancy as movie star, but he seems a good deal less comfortable in this role than he did as the hero in last year’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Owen Grady is a man’s-man type, almost akin to the kind of character Burt Reynolds might have played in the 1970s. Pratt may look the part, but his delivery is a bit choppy; a handful of times, it sounds like he’s aiming for a Southern accent but chickens out. And unfortunately, he’s got little chemistry with Howard, whose stilted delivery strains too hard to convey Claire’s lack of understanding of people as more than numbers on a spreadsheet. The rest of the ensemble—from sole returning cast member BD Wong to Irrfan Khan and a villainous Vincent D’Onofrio—acquit themselves as well as possible, but the only standout is Jake Johnson, as a control-room technician who’s the smartest person in the film. No wonder he frequently gets ignored by everyone else.
Jurassic World is far from a disaster; arguably, it’s the best sequel in the franchise. (The Lost World: Jurassic Park, in part because of Jeff Goldblum’s delightfully snarky performance, comes close but remains too mean-spirited. This film only approaches that nastiness in one gruesome sequence in which dinos wreak havoc on the humans killing time on the main stretch of shops in the park.) Ultimately, though, this entry rehashes a lot of the beats from the 1993 picture in the unfulfilled hopes of offering an interesting variation on a familiar theme. Put it this way: If you listen to a great cover band play your favorite song, you may not bristle too much, smiling at the memory of the first time you heard the song and feeling grateful that it isn’t being desecrated. But they’re still a cover band, not the real thing. Better to just listen the original song and hope the members of the cover band get the gumption to do something original themselves.