I brought my two oldest grandsons to see the new Jurassic Park movie, “Jurassic World Dominion.” Based on the previous outings we all expected the movie to be full of exciting, frenetic action and very deficient in plot. But we plunked down our ducats and endured the half hour of coming attractions.
Well, they threw everything including the kitchen sink into this potboiler. They brought back Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern and Sam Neill to reprise their characters from the original Jurassic Park film. They had some ridiculous plot about a cloned girl who was produced by parthenogenesis (virgin birth) by the granddaughter of Richard Attenborough’s character John Hammond from the first movie. Then they added an evil corporation producing giant locusts to eat up the world’s food supply to corner the market on genetically modified crops.
Then there were intrigues and kidnappings. There was Chris Pratt lassoing dinosaurs in the snow of Montana and other equally absurd scenarios. Finally, all of the good characters, old and new, band together to defeat the evil corporation and as a capstone the same small dinosaurs that ate Wayne Knight’s character Dennis Nedry in the original Jurassic Park, eat the evil CEO in this movie. What could be better than that?
Well, the movie was a hot mess. But dinosaurs are chasing people and even eating a few so what else could I ask from a Jurassic Park sequel? Afterwards, over some burgers and fries we agreed that it was ridiculous but highly satisfactory for our needs on this family movie outing.
But if someone is looking for an intelligent summer movie this is not that movie. It’s strictly an exercise in summer blockbuster sequel abuse. Well at least they must be finished with Goldblum, Dern and Neill. That at least is something.