By the time I had finished wading through this mess, ‘dear god what did I just watch’ was my conclusion.
Fans of the original “Jurassic Park” will be forgiven for a feeling of déjà vu when watching this, and I don’t mean this in a good way. The plot is virtually identical to the original, except with more monsters, more extras to run away screaming, and more gore to line up with current audience expectations. There are two children, an adult who doesn’t much like children, the obligatory baddy who wants to exploit the dinosaurs and ended up being munched on by one, and the stupid rich guy with more money than brains.
The allegedly military bad guy was painfully cliché, and Vincent D’Onofrio, the actor who portrayed him, is worthy of much better material than he was provided with here. The colossal and obvious short-sightedness of the character is something of a standard in action movies, and while I haven’t met any military types myself I would question whether they are really this dumb, as surely such foolishness would get you killed quickly in a war zone. The rich owner of the park is equally cliché, demanding bigger and better dinosaurs to increase his audience and then scratching his head about why it all goes wrong.
This leads to the (unintentionally) funniest moment in the movie. Why, demands rich guy of (equally cliché) scientist, did you make such an unstoppable monster? I didn’t authorise this!
Yes, you did, responds the scientist. You wanted something larger, scarier, more teeth, to bring in the public.
Either this movie was being surprisingly self-referential or (more probably) unintentionally ironic. Because that statement is this movie in a nutshell. Even if it was deliberate, alluding to your own repetitiveness with a wink at your audience does not save your movie. It just leaves the audience rolling its collective eyes going ‘yes, we know!’
The greatest tragedy of this movie is the subplot, because the subplot of the velociraptors’ relationship with their human trainer should have been the main plot. This was interesting. This I wanted to see. Instead it was given little attention and was left in the shadow of the big nasty (dull) mega-monster. Velociraptor language and society was hinted at but not explored. This was the movie we should have been watching, and instead we saw a mere shadow of what might have been.
I would have to give this a big thumbs down. A lot of flash and special effects, but not much substance.
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Eclectic Assemblage 