★★½ (2½ out of 4)
Everyone loves dinosaurs. Or at least I thought so until I felt my feet dragging while lining up to see “Jurassic World Rebirth,” the beginning of a profit-motivated fourth trilogy in the franchise that Steven Spielberg triumphantly spawned more than three decades ago from a Michael Crichton bestseller. It should work. It’s certainly worked before. And it will work again if a predicted worldwide gross of $250 million really does come true over this July 4th weekend.
"...it was through kids that I found my way into this movie or at least the best parts of it."
Still, what’s the goal besides money? Facts must be faced. Dinosaur fatigue has set in, even with a Black Widow Avenger (Scarlett Johansson), a singing-dancing “Wicked” prince (Jonathan Bailey) and a two-time Oscar winner (Mahershala Ali) leading the charge this time.
My heart sunk further when Bailey’s paleontologist character, a dino museum curator, complains that the public is getting bored with these creatures. They had 12 customers last week when lines used to snake around the block. How meta. And the plot, cooked up by screenwriter David Koepp and director Gareth Edwards, pivots around collecting dinosaur DNA to cure—wait for it—heart disease. Talk about the opposite of kid friendly.
And yet it was through kids that I found my way into this movie or at least the best parts of it.
The kids fidgeted (me too) through the jungle of exposition that opens the film. That’s when we learn that Big Pharma creep Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) has hired Zora Bennett (Johansson), an ex-military covert operative. and Dr. Henry Loomis (Bailey), a paleontologist bored with domesticated dinos (They’re all over the place, even under the Brooklyn Bridge.).
The goal is to break a ton of laws and travel to the forbidden zone. That’s a deserted research facility near the Equator—Duncan Kincaid (Ali) will be guide and boat captain—to find a mutant breed of murderous wild things on land, sea and air and extract those blood samples. Getting past a deformed, six-limbed tyrannosaur dubbed Distortus Rex will be a bitch. And did I mention that the blood must be collected while the creatures are alive?
Kids, as we all know, hate to be told things. And the yakety-yak weighs a ton. Seeing dinosaurs is a different story. So when we finally get to that island and lay eyes on these creatures, the excitement level goes up to 11. It’s here that the A-list, overqualified cast is reduced to bait for ravenous critters. To add to the food supply, the movie throws in a family of civilians stranded on the island: Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his daughter Teresa (Luna Blaise), her stoner boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono) and the youngest daughter, Isabella (Audrina Miranda).
I can’t say much for the paycheck acting, which doesn’t require much more than staring at the camera in fear and wonderment. The dinosaurs, however, are Oscar worthy. The first creature they extract samples from is a flying Mosasaurus, a sight that snaps those restless kids into rapt attention. The intensity increases when a pack of swimming Spinosaurus runs the team aground. That's where Zora grabs the second sample from a Titanosaurus. The third requires infiltrating a Quetzalcoatlus nest to retrieve a sample from, of all fragile things, an egg.
No spoilers, except to say that the finale includes a star-making bid from a cutie-pie Aquilops that little Isabella names Dolores. Still, it takes cameos from those terror titans, the T-rex and the Distortus-rex, to scare you breathless. Kudos to the fx team for creating the illusion that the dinosaurs are up and breathing, honking, hunting, and stampeding. It’s a grabber for the best of the reasons: You won’t believe your eyes.
In those moments you forget this rehash is sloppy, sappy, frenetic, charmless, plotless, derivative and devoid of surprise and characters to give a damn about. In those moments, regrettably few, “Jurassic World Rebirth” delivers a rush of pure elation to delight the dino-crazed kid in all of us. And wasn’t that the point all along?