JURASSIC WORLD -- a review

JURASSIC WORLD – a review by Gary Fry

 

Looking for a real-life cartoon? One with absolutely implausible plotting all the way? Well, it’s all here and then some. There’s a cookie-cut gung-ho military bloke with a gut full of stewed Middle East insurgents. There’s an Oriental scientific genius whose skills come without morals. Then we have a vacillating Indian mediator representing all the emerging markets. And, just like the first JP film, there's another fat bloke more interested in coke and crisps than in ensuring the security of a compound housing the world's most lethal, steroid-chocked, flesh-enthused, merciless and cunning killing machine, like, ever. So it goes; despite this terrible recession, you just can't get the staff. But rest assured, the US everyman – a Mr. Pratt, no less! -- and his impromptu moll will save the day: in her case, all in high heels.

 

I have to say that the kids dealt rather well with the super-dinosaur attack -- not a hint of poo or wee in their sealed viewing unit. I additionally admired the way the male lead raced his motorcycle across several miles of perfectly flat woodland, while the beasts he followed leapt and ducked amid fallen tree trunks and viciously entangling vegetation. Dextrous fellow. And tell me, American folk, do aunts in the States have more familial obligations than they do in the UK? The poor lass here was given a very hard time about having a career and various commitments (yeah, we get it: she quantifies rather than empathises, but her transformation is represented by her hair getting curlier as the film progresses), whereas my aunt, unemployed and with all the time in the world, doesn't give a shit about me. I suddenly feel all neglected; I think mine at least owes me a little pocket money in arrears.

 

Anyway, the grand finale is fun, where a – [SPOILER] -- T-Rex inadvertently (and yet with remarkable timeliness, given its non-appearance in any other part of the film) saves the day, before running off into the sunset to have a little triumphant, the-natural-order-of-this-modified-world-is-restored roar about it. And let's not forget the help and support of the last-surviving trained -- yes, trained -- velociraptor, which also does its essential pro-human business and then skitters away into woodland, presumably hoping that it's done enough to secure some kind of spin-off show on US TV. Or perhaps the general public will question its loyalty, since -- as my partner observed -- one minute it was in complicit cahoots with the super-raptor, and the next biting the shit out of it. Still, near the end, in a scene which clearly escaped the producer, it exchanged a collegial nod with Mr. Pratt, so maybe he'll put in a good word for it.

 

Anyway, if, on the basis of the above, you think I disliked this film, you're wrong. I thought it was jolly good noisy fun. Just don't do anything ridiculously ambitious like...well, “thinking” while you're watching it.