Movie Review: Jurassic World (2015) *The Park is Back in Business*

Jurassic Park was the first PG-13 film I was “allowed” to see in the theaters, and as it has turned out, every subsequent Jurassic film has come out during a period when I lived in or was visiting West Virginia, as I have been this week.  That movie experience of seeing dinosaurs come to life in, what I still think, is one of the best action/adventure films of all-time, remains indelible to this day.  The subsequent installments….not so much.  If you’re looking for a quick, spoiler-free review, Jurassic World is the best and most logical sequel to the original film; however, if you’re looking to recapture the glory of 1993, you’re going to leave seriously disappointed.  It will make a boatload of money and, if my audience’s reaction was any indication, leave us looking for more dinos in the future.

My Favorite Scene: The Lost World – Jurassic Park (1997) “Don’t Go Into The Tall Grass”

We continue our countdown to Jurassic World, with a look at the second film in the Jurassic series: The Lost World.  This was a sequel that was pretty much demanded, but there was no story for it.  Michael Crichton wrote the novel as a kind of quasi-screenplay for Spielberg to operate from, but in doing so had to make a lot of retcon changes to his first novel (for example, Jeff Goldblum’s character dies in the first novel….which was awkwardly remedied).  It borrowed sequences from the first novel, like the opening with the girl finding the compys, but it was more a muddled journey than a cohesive film.  Then you had the dinos eating San Diego and it became a 1950’s monster movie.  Plus, let’s just say Jeff Goldblum is great in small doses, not as a leading man.

There are cool parts to the film, several exciting set pieces, but the most visually striking thing about the film to me was when they’ve escaped the T-Rexes and run pell mell into this field of tall grass and you see an overhead shot of the raptors closing in on them as a pack from all these angles, but all you see are increasingly speedy furrows forming in the brush.  It’s a brilliantly directed scene and had the whole movie been this good, maybe we’d have ended up with something as memorable as the original.