STACK NZ Jul #64

CINEMA

REVIEWS

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Jurassic Park is the benchmark for dinosaur films, The Lost World should have been great but wasn’t, and Jurassic Park III was a fun B-movie with A-grade FX. So where does reboot Jurassic World fit into the franchise’s fossil record? JURASSIC WORLD RELEASED: Now Showing DIRECTOR: Colin Trevorrow CAST: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D'Onofrio RATING: M

O ver the last 20 years, CGI addressed in Jurassic World . John Hammond’s dream of a dinosaur Disneyland has finally been realised; the park is open for business and a massive tourist attraction. But these days, kids would rather stare at their smartphones than at a stegosaurus, creating the need for a genetically engineered designer dinosaur – the Indominus Rex – that’s bigger, badder and scarier than anything that walked the earth 65 million years ago. Needless to say, this hybrid super- predator will not be contained and quickly escapes, threatening the safety of Jurassic World’s visitors and the bank balances of the greedy corporate types who create monsters with impunity. So who you gonna call? Sam Neill, right? Well, no. Who needs a dinosaur expert when you’ve got dinosaurs have lost their ‘wow’ factor – a fact that’s quickly Chris Pratt, JW’s resident raptor wrangler. Still in Star-Lord mode and prepping as the possible heir to Indiana Jones, Pratt is a predictably affable hero; at one point you’ll expect him to distract a raptor with a dance- off. The rest of the human cast are mostly ciphers; of course there are

the obligatory kids lost in the park (who you don’t really care about), while operations manager Bryce Dallas Howard does her best with an underwritten role. This is director Colin Trevorrow’s second film, following the 2012 arthouse time travel drama Safety Not Guaranteed . Hiring indie filmmakers to helm blockbusters is a great idea; often they’ll bring a fresh perspective to a familiar formula, like Gareth Edwards did with the visually creative Godzilla remake. Trevorrow handles the big set pieces with an assured hand, but unlike Edwards, his Hollywood debut looks just like any other FX-laden event movie. Functioning as a direct sequel to the 1993 original, Jurassic World is a terrific spectacle, but doesn’t reach the heights of Spielberg’s classic. Training the raptors is a bad idea, as is a disposable subplot involving the weaponisation of dinosaurs for the military. However, its rousing final act is worth the price of admission alone, recapturing the excitement we felt at the climax of Jurassic Park , while also paying direct homage to it. Consequently, you’ll leave the cinema thinking you’ve seen a better movie than you actually have. Scott Hocking

JULY 2015 JB Hi-Fi www.jbhifi.co.nz

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