Movie Review: Jurassic World—Rebirth

4 stars out of 5

Hot take: Jurassic World is more entertaining than Superman. There, I said it. I chalk it up to filmmakers who really know what they’re doing. Director Gareth Edwards earned his sci-fi stripes with 2014’s Godzilla and Rogue One. And writer David Koepp not only did the screenplay for the original Jurassic Park and the Lost World sequel, but also Mission: Impossible, 2002’s Spider-Man, and the last couple of Indiana Jones flicks. Plus it doesn’t hurt to have Amblin Entertainment in your corner with big daddy Spielberg in the executive producer’s chair.

My reaction was not a foregone conclusion. Yes, I have seen every Jurassic Park movie, but will readily admit that the quality varies from installment to installment. This time, instead of continuing the Chris Pratt saga, we kick it back to parts II and III and the InGen biotech company, who were apparently mixing dinosaur species with some, uh, mixed results.

Fast-forward to the present day and climate change has made the modern world inhospitable to dinos, plus the public’s fickle interests have moved on. But a slick, evil-seeming corporate guy (Rupert Friend) wants mercenary Scarlett Johannson to quietly travel to the forbidden region where dinos still thrive, retrieve some DNA, and bring it back to Big Pharma where it will cure heart disease but more importantly, generate beaucoup bucks. Rupert dangles a big payday in front of an interestingly sturdy-framed Johannson, and since they’re both Wes Anderson alum she says yes. They bring along nerdy dinosaur expert Dr. Loomis (nod to the Halloween franchise?) and charter a boat from Scarlett’s old pal Mahershala Ali.

Then there are a few other crew members who aren’t really introduced oh and here’s a innocent family in a sailboat and I’m wondering why are there so many characters?? And then it hits me, ohhhh they’re not all going to survive. Fair enough.

Once the story is set, the movie begins to get better and better. I was impressed with the clear plotting; modern sci-fi tends to over-plot. Our protagonists are collecting DNA from three species: one swims, one flies, and one is really big. So we know we’ll get three big action sequences. The sailing family and the research crew come together and then are separated, so we get two strands of adventures. (The family has the requisite little girl, and you might roll your eyes when she meets a cute little herbivore dino who enjoys her licorice — shades of E.T. and Reese’s Pieces.)

Beyond the early nod to climate science, I was pleased with some mature messaging woven into the script. Johannson and Ali (who deliver strong performances throughout) discuss finally doing something worthwhile with one’s life — an issue that crosses, or should cross, the minds of many of us folks of a certain age. And in our post-pandemic but current-research-defunding world, a discussed idea of open-sourcing a medical breakthrough sounds downright revolutionary.

And of course there’s lots of cool dino stuff, including one sequence that made me gasp. I actually would’ve preferred to see this in IMAX than Superdude.

This really felt like a old-fashioned summer blockbuster. And yeah, maybe I am old-fashioned, a dinosaur, even.