Jurassic World: Rebirth review – the plot is mid-level dumb but ‘good film' belongs among its keywords
Director
:
Gareth Edwards
Cert
:
12A
Starring
:
Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ed Skrein
Running Time
:
2 hrs 13 mins
Aficionados know that the second-best Jurassic Park film is Joe Johnson's lean Jurassic Park III. Those same wise folk accept that this is not saying a great deal. JP III may also, after the original, be the only episode that comes close to qualifying as a good film.
Jurassic World Rebirth
All hail
Gareth Edwards
for returning the series to similar basics. Following up Colin Trevorrow's truly ghastly
Jurassic World: Dominion
, the director of
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
and Monsters treats us to a nimble, economic adventure that works some old-school Spielbergian spectacle in with tight action sequences. It is no masterpiece. But 'good film' belongs among its keywords.
The plot is mid-level dumb.
Rupert Friend
stars as a representative of big pharma tasked with extracting organic material from certain dinosaurs that may help in the production of life-saving drugs. People who have never seen a film before will enjoy speculating whether he'll turn out to be more of a humanity-exploiting cad than he at first seems. Friend recruits the 'covert operative'
Scarlett Johansson
to fire the guns, the palaeontologist
Jonathan Bailey
to do the brainwork and the rough-hewn
Mahershala Ali
to pilot the boat.
If you are a sucker for all those Howard Hawks films in which tough men and tougher women bring endless professionalism to daunting tasks then you will surely allow Jurassic World: Rebirth some leeway. The starry cast has great fun chewing through David Koepp's adequate dialogue as they enter dank caves where no sane person would venture.
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Jurassic World Rebirth
The film progresses at a considerable clip, but Edwards, always at home to smoky visuals, finds at least one opportunity to remind us of the jaw-dropping wonder (remember Laura Dern's jaw literally dropping?) that made the first film so memorable. Enormous herbivores court with intertwining necks as the party, pausing from white-water rafting and the evasion of flying carnivores, gaze on astonished.
[
Jurassic World: Rebirth director Gareth Edwards – 'I think I've got the wrong personality for this job'
Opens in new window
]
Undated film still from Jurassic World Rebirth. Pictured: David Iacono as Xavier Dobbs, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Reuben Delgado, Scarlett Johansson as Zora Bennett, Mahershala Ali as Duncan Kincaid and Jonathan Bailey as Dr Henry Loomis. See PA Feature SHOWBIZ Film Reviews. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature SHOWBIZ Film Reviews. PA Photo. Picture credit should read: Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment/Jasin Boland. All Rights Reserved. NOTE TO EDITORS: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature SHOWBIZ Film Reviews.
Sadly, the film does give into many of the series' later flaws. It works against the central premise – look how things were long ago – to include hypermutated dinosaurs that seem no more terrifying than your industry-standard tyrannosaurus. The final conflagration is all noise and chaos.
Jurassic World: Rebirth plays, nonetheless, as a refreshing blast of matinee exuberance after the pomposity of the previous three films. Yes, third best in the series. For whatever little that is worth.
In cinemas from Wednesday, July 2nd
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