REVIEW: Jurassic World - Rebirth

 

   I had a mixed reaction to Jurassic World: Rebirth, but it did make for one of the most enjoyable theater experiences I've had in recent memory. 

    I have to imagine that a part of this is because my most common theater appointments are matinee screenings, but I had the opportunity to see this one at a fairly well-attended midnight screening. And there's nary a film more tailored for surround-sound roaring and screens wide enough to contain these de-extinct creatures. ("Objects on the screen feel closer than they appear.") It was natural for me to cap the experience by applauding as the credits stared to roll, even if, as usual, I was the only one in the auditorium to do so. 

   Yes, I am that kind of moviegoer; yes, I enjoyed the experience that much, and I imagine I will revisit it across time. 

    That's not to imagine the movie is beyond reproach, but I suppose it bears mentioning that, generally, this is a movie plagued more by missed opportunities than active transgressions. 

     I will admit I have complicated feelings about the film's premise. It is something of a retcon to decide that dinosaurs all just kind of migrated to the forgotten corners of the world once we were done chasing them across the country with our motorcycles. Moreover, it undermines the muscle of the entire Jurassic saga--learning to live with the consequences of scrambling the ecosystem. All it took was one new director in order to tuck dinosaurs away to where we don't have to worry about them anymore: I don't know if this is what Malcom meant when he said, "life finds a way." 

    But this is nonetheless the situation in which our main characters are assigned to go into dinosaur land and obtain DNA samples from three specific dinosaurs in order to concoct a cure for heart disease.

    Naturally, there are complications to this mission. A civilian family on vacation becomes an accidental casualty in the dinosaur game. This is where I want to say "and suddenly the extraction mission becomes a rescue mission," but that's really only halfway true. The two parties have a crucial intersection at the end of Act I, but they spend too little time together during the middle to affect each other the way you want them to. 

    All the headliners look happy to be here. Scarlett Johanssen, Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali all look comfortable in their gear and bring an appropriate level of levity to the adventure. 

    But the performers that carry the heaviest load are actually the newcomers--Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, and Audrina Miranda--the players bringing the Delgado family to life. (That's "relative newcomers," I guess. Turns out Garcia-Rulfo was in The Lincoln Lawyer.) These guys feel more vulnerable without the clout of celebrity to safeguard them against the T-rex, and this goes a long way to bring more gravity to the situation. I was certain I was going to hate Iacono's character as the dopey boyfriend, a character type that has historically enabled some gross real-life imitators, but he sticks the landing. 

    Director Gareth Edwards behaves like a spiritual medium and treats his dinosaurs as the greatest fantastical apparitions he could be charged with summoning. Sometimes the phantoms are frightening, other times they're regal. The way DP John Mathieson captures the titanosaur ballad makes for perhaps the loveliest thing put to film in the Jurassic franchise.

    The film is strongest in the middle when things are a little more open-ended and it can revel in these little side quests without having to answer for its plot expenditures. It's really only toward the end when you have to confront that it could have been any gaggle of humans assigned to this adventure, and the ending would have been the exact same. 

    The film isn't missing any "To Be or Not To Be," scale moral quandaries. Action-adventure films generally focus on some very basic question about the human condition--and I'm also talking about the original Jurassic Park here. The arc in that film was rather straightforward, but it was good about making sure that the main characters believed something at the end of the film that they didn't at the beginning. RE: Grant starts the film hating kids, but learns that he can actually be a pretty good dad when thrown into that position. 

    There is some attempt at that here. A-team debates about whether they ought to give the miracle treatment to the rich folks or the common man, but there's very little about their island adventure that naturally puts them in positions to wrestle with such a dilemma. I'm stretching to try to connect something like their rock-climbing field trip with the Quetzalcoatlus (sp?) to Zora and Henry learning that they don't need money after all. 

    I'd expect them to come to that conclusion as they spent time trying to keep this unlucky family alive, but again these two parties spend tragically little time interacting. 

    And the grand old irony is ... despite the internet digging in its heels against Trevorrow's trilogy, this was something that those films actually understood and actually committed to: what did the characters believe about the world at the start, and how did being chased by dinosaurs change all that? Again, that arc was sometimes as straightforward as "Do I believe that my adopted parents actually love me?" 

    But underestimating that anchor in the discourse penalized those movies in the conversation, and neglecting it here is what appears to have crippled this one in production. 

                    --The Professor