Not because Jurassic World was good — not in any way, shape or form — but because of a morbid curiosity.
I mean, they couldn't imagine a franchise could be rebooted from such a low place and then sink further, could they?
Well...
...the good news is...
...Fallen Kingdom isn't as bad as World.
It's a close fight at times, certainly, and they still think they're making high drama when all we want to see is people getting eaten, but somehow this isn't the terrible car crash we were expecting.
I mean, it's not great. Not by a long way.
But when you find yourself grinning and almost cheering five minutes in when a dinosaur eats a human, you know they must have got something right.
It's not the plot, that's for sure — even Rafe Spall and Toby Jones have the decency to look slightly awkward when delivering the narrative.
It's not the continuity either, as that's shot to hell.
And it's not the running time, which is at least 30 minutes too long.
No, it's the dinosaurs. That bit they got right.
You actually care what happens to the CGI and animatronic little (and not so little) buggers, far more than you do to their flesh n blood co-stars.
It's a flaw in the film in a way, because you're supposed to be rooting for Bryce Dallas Howard (shoes now sorted), Chris Pratt, Daniella Pineda and Justice Smith.
But in a straight fight? Nah, team dinosaur all the way.
And this is for two main reasons — the first, a hangover from the last movie, is the two main characters are still not properly drawn. In the case of BDH, they've actually forgotten a key personality trait too.
Secondly, the monsters actually have more personality than most of the humans.
There's a point where one of them gets left behind and you actually feel sad. And it's only one of the ones you've seen in the background, not even one of the main dinosaurs.
It was said on Radio 5 recently that the Jurassic franchise should never have been, because it's hard to stretch the whole theme park riff beyond the first film, and they were right.
The original movie was a modern classic, but the following two fell off the cliff so fast they should have made the whole thing extinct.
But, clearly having learnt nothing from the first movie, they brought the concept back from the dad and created another three hulking behemoths.
And other than really annoying the anti-paleo Christians Against Dinosaurs lobby, there really is no point for these new films to exist.
The plot is being stretched beyond redemption (the next one is going to make even less sense), the characters aren't even likeable and there aren't even any decent jokes or songs to offset the appalling terribleness of it all.
As a measure of just how bad this film is, we actually say it ages ago we just couldn't bring ourselves to actually write up the review.
It has no redeeming features or qualities, the highlights are people getting eaten and it doesn't even have the decency to be so bad it makes us angry. Which would be more fun.
Instead, it's just there. It just exists. And we have yet to find anyone who can explain why this is...
No comments:
Post a Comment