Jurassic World is the sequel to the Jurassic Park series - which, please forgive me, I have not seen. But maybe this is a good thing, since the review will solely be based on the movie itself, without any comparisons to the original. Also, there are SPOILERS in the review because it would be very difficult to talk about this movie without any - you have been warned. On the other hand, I don't really consider these spoilers, because:
1) You should be expecting these obvious events to happen, assuming you are paying attention during the movie, or,
2) These scenes aren't really important to the story at all, so knowing these facts before your first viewing won't hurt much.
A very short introduction: Two brothers go to visit an awesome island with dinosaurs, where they are engineering a hybrid dinosaur/monster that somehow ends up going out-of-control (didn't see that coming!).
If you've read my other reviews, you would have noticed that I usually flesh out the intro into a paragraph; however, for Jurassic World, there is no need to because that's pretty much it. Read the intro again and try to imagine what would happen in the movie. Do you see the two kids in danger because of some mischief, a badass buff guy coming to save them with a pretty woman who will end up his girlfriend by the end, and the countless cliche scenes where the main characters are too lucky to die while others around them are more unfortunate? If so, you are right! Jurassic World tells you what the ending will be like and fills the middle in with action scenes, and you know exactly who will stay alive and who will die. Granted, the trailer did tell us what to expect - I shouldn't wish for a more complex, developed storyline. But just because it tells us in advanced that it will be predictable doesn't mean it's excusable.
There is almost nothing unexpected in the plot - oh wait, there is. There are these incoherent, meaningless side-stories that get developed throughout, which leave you wondering 'why did they insert these scenes that deter from the focus of the movie - a giant dinosaur on loose'. Here's an example. Amidst of all the chaos that's happening, there's a crazy idiot who persists on putting dinosaurs into military use. So he decides to take control over the island's system, brings in military units, and decides to free(?) the raptors to attack the loose monster. This plan barely worked at all because the raptor trainer (Chris Pratt) reluctantly decided to work with him, but the crazy guy says he would have carried it out even without Pratt. How? There's no other way it would have worked - dinosaurs don't just work for people. Was the point of this back story to bring in the raptors to attack the monster so that at the end, they eventually defeat it? They could have done that fine without the useless, drawn-out backstory. The other example is the scene about the children's parents getting divorced. The two talk about it for five minutes, the younger brother starts crying, the older one comforts him (with very bad acting), and its over. No more divorce talk/insinuation again. So at the end, when the parents are reunited with the children, are they trying to say the family is knit together again due to the hardship? If it was, it was very, very poorly portrayed.
Onward with the characters. The main characters are the Owen (the trainer), Claire (the overseer of the island) and possibly the two kids. About the acting, Chris Pratt played an excellent trainer, Bryce Dallas Howard was also good, but the rest (the kids and most of the other minor characters) were not too astonishing. It is possible that their bad acting is amplified by the poorly written characters. Dynamic characters change in a movie (yes, that is the definition of a dynamic character). But they are supposed to change throughout a movie, not at a single moment in the movie (well, at least not in this one). Claire is the main example, turning from a bureaucratic, apathetic woman who doesn't know her nephews' names, to the hero of the day, running in high-heels while leading a T-rex to save her company.
There were also many awkward characters (by this I mean, real people in that situation would never do or say that - it's cheezy movie dialogue!) including the Indian head-of-island and his ridiculous helicopter line, the Asian scientist, and the dinosaurs-for-military guy. The dynamic relationships are also poorly developed, the main one being between the brothers. It's obvious they don't get along at first and they will try to change that by the end through what they've faced together. But even if you put two strangers in mortal danger together, they will become best buddies by the end. The special brotherly bond is not formed even by the end, just the we've-faced-so-much-shit-together-and-survived bond.
Other weaknesses included the forced humor and inconsistent tone. But here is a redeeming factor. If you enter the theater without expecting much and don't think too much during the movie, you will have fun. It was, after all, a visually-stimulating two hours. Just sit back and relax, and enjoy the ride.
7.0/10 - Like I said, don't think too much while watching.
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