‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kindgom’ is predictable and not much fun

Posted on June 29, 2018

By MARK VIOLA

The original “Jurassic Park” film, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the book by Michael Crichton, remains one of the best summer blockbusters ever released, featuring a fun story, memorable characters and cutting-edge special effects. The sequel, “Lost World,” did an admirable job capturing that feeling, but still couldn’t live up to the first one. Then came “Jurassic Park III,” which was so bad that the franchise was killed for good (or at least for 14 years).

Next came “Jurassic World,” which restarted the franchise, re-opened the park and devoured the box office, delivering what was then the highest-grossing opening weekend of all time and a final tally that still ranks sixth all-time domestically and fifth all-time worldwide.

The headline for my review of that film was “‘Jurassic World’ is fun enough so you can ignore most of its flaws.” That neatly sums up my feelings for the film, even three years later. It was painfully predictable, the characters were two-dimensional at best and the plot was predicated on people making a series of dumb decisions. In spite of this, however, the film succeeded in its most important task. It was fun. Simple as that. And, because it was fun, it also had the tension needed to keep us interested from start to finish.

Now we have “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” which picks up the story four years after the end of the previous film. Jurassic World is no more after the events of that movie, but Isla Nublar still has plenty of dinosaurs living on it, at least for a little while longer, since the island’s long-dormant volcano has become active and is threatening to kill all the remaining dinosaurs.

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