Jurassic World comes to DVD: Our review

DIRECTOR: Colin Treverrow

SCREENPLAY: Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, Derek Connolly and Colin Treverrow

STARRING: Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.

RUNNING TIME: 124 mins CERTIFICATE: 12A

Jurassic World takes place twenty-two years after the incident at Jurassic Park and a new theme park, Jurassic World, now operates in Isla Nublar owned by multi-millionaire eccentric Simon Misrani (Irfan Khan) who shares the same ideological vision for the park as John Hammond. Brothers Zach and Gray Mitchell are sent there to visit their aunt, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), the park’s operations manager. Claire’s assistant is their guide as Claire is too busy recruiting corporate sponsors with a new attraction, a genetically modified dinosaur called Indominus rex. This monster is a genetic hybrid of tyrannosaurus rex and velociraptor. Why create such a beast, you may well ask? “More teeth, claws and scare factor!” Claire tells the investors.

While Zak and Grey are romping around the park Claire visits Indominus rex’s enclosure. Accompanying her, on Misrani’s orders, is velociraptor wrangler Owen Grady (Chris Pratt). Misrani thinks his expertise on dinosaurs might prove useful and he may be able to identify security flaws other eyes may have missed. Unfortunately during the visit Indominus rex escapes and starts rampaging towards the main body of the park leaving a swathe of slaughtered dinosaurs and humans in its wake. Trying to stop it are Clair and Owen but this is hampered by the fact that Claire needs to find her nephews, who are lost somewhere in the park, and the head of InGen security Vic Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio) wants to use both rex and the raptors as military weapons.

So what’s to like about the film?

Let’s be frank, the thing with the Jurassic Park franchise is that the humans aren’t really the stars of the show, are they? Even with big names in the franchise’s past like Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neil, it’s the dinosaurs that steal all the accolades. Them and the cgi techno wizards that bring them to roaring life.

Do we care if the acting in the film is good? To be fair the cast of Jurassic World didn’t do too bad a job. Howard is in suitably neurotic form as a corporate bigwig (and, yeah, she is definitely easy on the eyes) and Chris Pratt’s hunky velociraptor trainer is an entertaining cross of Tarzan and Doctor Doolittle with his bulging biceps and rapport with the raptors! Irfan Khan’s Simon Masrani is wonderfully eccentric and D’Onofrio’s villainous head of security is suitably slimy. Their performances were good, engaging even, but not stellar. Not that it matters as audiences don’t go to watch a film like Jurassic World for Oscar worthy performances. They go to watch dinosaurs running amok, tearing each other to bloody ribbons and munching on humans. They go for the thrill of watching prehistoric CGI monsters mash up buildings and vehicles as if they were sandcastles and reduce civilised order to anarchy.

The verdict? If you want fine drama – go and watch a De Niro flick. If you want an action packed thrillfest, with bellowing prehistoric monsters and humans shrieking in terror, go watch Jurassic World.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhQKwJFRL1g]

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