As much as I’d like to use an analogy in this review like I usually do, my problems with this movie are multi-faceted, even after splitting the review into two categories.

I went into this movie fully expecting to write a cinema smackdown, which says a lot considering I only write these for movies that I am personally upset with. I secretly wanted to watch this and actually enjoy it, but… we can’t all get what we want.

The only part of this movie I liked was Chris Pratt. From the moment he came on screen he was just funny and charismatic and honestly what else can we expect from this man? The premise of this movie is something I couldn’t get behind. Saving the dinosaurs. “Who cares?” I thought. They were extinct, we obviously can’t control them or keep them in a habitat that will be safe, just let ’em go extinct again. But this movie very poorly pushes this dinosaur saving agenda. I wanted to care, but it really did nothing to compel me to think saving them was… worth it at all. This is probably why I respected Chris Pratt immediately for saying they should let the dinosaurs die, and also why when I saw that he stowed away on the plane I just…

MISSION FAILED

Respect –

Jokes aside, I understood that he wanted to save Blue. I would’ve let Blue die honestly, but I understood.

So, much like your mom making you take your annoying younger siblings with you when you wanna hang out with your friends, Chris Pratt was forced by mommy Legendary Pictures to perform alongside two human trashbags and the redhead from the last movie. I know I said I wouldn’t use any analogy, but this one works too well. The two trashbags are unfunny at best. And really useless to the movie’s plot.

Your next line is: they actually had obvious roles in the story!

Right, but wrong. When the bad guys suddenly decided to shoot blue despite the fact that it honestly would be in their best interest to just cooperate with Chris and get this unique specimen back safe, alive, and without having to waste resources shooting and subsequently keeping it alive, I was genuinely confused. Didn’t really help anybody.

Then it hit me. Blue had to get mortally wounded (by a tranq*, mind you) to give purpose to the “paleo-vet” they decided to shove into this plot. Please tell me where you could possibly study to be a paleo-vet, especially considering that she’s never seen a dinosaur. Knowhere.

Then there’s Hackerman!™ He really only proved that he was good at browning his underwear and being incredibly annoying as a younger sibling can be (we’re still using this analogy). He’s pretty useless except for two hand crafted scenarios that were put into the movie to make him seem like he has a part to play but… he really doesn’t. Ned from Spiderman: Homecoming had a better Hackerman role in the movie and it was just one short scene. That’s because they fit him well into the plot rather than isolated scenarios. I’ll be honest. I hate this guy. He only does stupid and annoying things in the movie.

Then there’s the unnecessary subplot. Is it a subplot? I feel like it is because it really didn’t need to be written in but on the other hand it had such a large presence in the movie. Thing is, I spent the entire movie wondering who these people are and why I’m supposed to care who they are. And I’m not saying I missed their stupid introductions, but they really felt like a crew of cameos that didn’t belong. Which, they didn’t. They were sequel fodder. Only to be truly relevant in the next movie.

There are a number of terrible writing moments in this movie that I wish I could overlook like the little girl successfully running away from a dinosaur that has a sprint speed of over 40 miles per hour, dinosaurs being able to climb up ladder and platforms when it’s painfully obvious that they wouldn’t really be able to do so, the most deadly dinosaur (prototype) not being able to instantly kill a smaller velociraptor, the deadly dino very slowly creeping to kill the little girl and also the little girl refusing to do anything to hide from the dinosaur despite the fact that she’s mostly under the covers, ugh…

The list goes on. It’s excruciating.

My last qualm is the end of the movie where we’re faced with the same dilemma from the beginning and Chris is once again like “let them die” and I was like,

MISSION PASSED

Respect+

Sadly, this was short lived as the little girl released all of the dinosaurs to invade civilians areas and kill many people rather than just let them die for the sake of everybody else’s safety.

A movie with sequelitis setting up a sequel. I previously thought only Michael Bay to be so brazen. It’s a trend now it seems.

Verdict?

This- oh wait a second. There’s still something else I haven’t talked about! The God. Forsaken. Plot. Twist.

When they revealed the photo of the girl’s mother my initial thought was, “Her grandmother is her mother?” Then I realised that the girl would remember taking this picture and I readjusted my thinking to, “Wow, they couldn’t even bother to find another actress that could pass as the girl’s mother and instead just used the girl herself for the picture?” It was sad but this movie had committed so many cinema sins that I wasn’t that surprised. In the back of my head though, I thought, “What if she was a clone lol” and the part of my brain responsible for all intelligent thought said, “There’s no way they’d do something that stupid in this universe.”

Except, they did. And normally, when you call something in a movie before it actually happens, you have that “I knew it!” or “I called it!” moment. Yet, despite the fact that I thought of it happening, I only felt remorse when it did because I didn’t think the movie could stoop any lower. Who’s the director even?

[A quick Google search later]

So it turns out J. A. Bayona is some guy who directed a handful of movies I’ve never heard of before. I honestly don’t know why he was given the reigns of this movie but it’s probably for the same reason they didn’t bother to put together a decent story or cast.

The Real Verdict

The only reason I felt like I didn’t waste my time watching this was because of Cinema Smackdown. I kind of enjoy writing them, so going to this movie knowing I’ll probably end up writing one made me eager to watch (for free, I might add. I wouldn’t dare pay to see this) but that’s it. I really felt like my time had been taken away from me. The only movie I’ve ever watched where I felt like my time was more wasted was The Mountain Between Us, which I wrote an extensive review on.

In the end, see this movie if someone else is willing to pay for your ticket… maybe. I’m not sure I can say it’s worth the free viewing. Actually, I take that back. Chris Pratt makes it worth watching but his charismatic presence is dwindled by the last act of the movie so you might as well leave at that point.

If you wanna read my review on the meta, which is arguably my strangest and least straightforward review yet, click here.

 

*Yea, I realise that if you’re not careful when making tranquiliser darts, you can kill whatever animal you’re targeting. But knowing that they’d need these animals alive, especially Blue, you’d think they’d bring the proper equipment. “They’re bad guys, they don’t care”. Then why didn’t they just bring guns? “Wouldn’t that be suspicious to the main characters?” Would it matter considering that they would just force them at gunpoint? I mean, they don’t seem to care about anything but getting paid (despite the fact that they almost royally screwed their chance of doing so). I rest my case.