Jurassic World (2015)

I finally got around to watching Jurassic World this week. I knew the movie was going to be a big hit, but I had never imagined it would be such a huge commercial success. I was pretty shocked when I found out it had already made more than $200million in the domestic box office on opening weekend. I already wanted to watch the movie, but knowing this made me want to watch it even more. I wanted to see if the hype was warranted. Now that I’ve seen the movie I can see what the hype was about, and why it’s been such a massive success. At the same time however I left the theater feeling a little disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I thought Jurassic World was a great movie, and I was thoroughly entertained, but this is definitely one of those movies that while good, could have been so much better.

First off, the things I liked about the movie. Obviously the main reason people want to watch this movie is all the action sequences and the dinosaurs. Jurassic World more than delivers on both. This movie has some of the best CGI I have ever seen. The dinosaurs look very very real, it’s amazing how far technology has advanced in the 20 years since the first film in the series came out. The action in the movie is fantastic as well. There are a ton of fights between man and dinosaur and even between dinosaur and dinosaur. The best parts of the movie definitely revolve around the dinosaurs and the mayhem they create.

Chris Pratt was his usual awesome self, he nailed his character as the tough guy badass, and he was also quite funny in the few scenes where he actually had comedic dialogue. The rest of the cast was nothing special, but It was great seeing Jake Johnson (New Girl) as one of the Jurassic World employees. I will say however that I was thoroughly impressed by the fact that Bryce Dallas Howards character wore high heels throughout the entire movie. She runs in heels better than most people do in running shoes, it really is an amazing feat.

The main thing that I disliked about the movie was the fact that it was painfully predictable. The movie was pretty straightforward, nothing really surprised me. I was even able to predict exactly how certain characters would die, which is never a good sign when it comes to a movie like this. Pretty much all the characters were one dimensional. You could tell who the good guys and the bad guys were right from the start and those roles didn’t change at all throughout the film. Everything was a little too obvious for my taste. I never really felt scared for any of the main characters, which is a bit sad considering the type of film Jurassic World is.

Not only was the movie predictable, but the number of plot holes was pretty obvious as well. I can overlook a certain amount of plot holes, particularly in summer blockbuster type movies, but Jurassic World had just too many to ignore. There were far too many lucky coincidences for my taste. Also, most of the dialogue in the film was pretty cheesy. I wouldn’t really say the acting was bad, I just think the actors didn’t have the best dialogue to work with.

I know I’m being pretty harsh on this film, and that’s probably due to my high expectations going in. The thing about Jurassic World that upsets me isn’t that it’s a bad movie, I would actually say It’s a pretty good movie, it’s just that it could have been so much better. At the end of the day Jurassic World is not the smartest or well thought out movie, but it is entertaining, and it more than delivers on the action side of things. I wish it would have been better, but I would still recommend watching it. For all my criticisms I still left the theater in a good mood, and feeling entertained. 3.5/5