Early on in Jurassic World: Rebirth (aka Jurassic Park VII), we meet perhaps the most boring family ever—a dad, his two daughters, and the older girl’s pothead boyfriend—sailing across the Atlantic. After they all squabble for an excruciatingly long time about whose turn it is to take the wheel, a huge sea-beast right out of The Meg swells out of the ocean and uses their vessel as a back scratcher, capsizing the sailboat, and plunking everyone in the water. Whee!
Lucky for them, the closest ship in that remote part of the ocean is carrying the other gaggle of main characters… they are on a secret expedition led by mercenary opportunists Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali, with a scientist (Jonathan Bailey) and the billionaire paying for everything (Rupert Friend) tagging along. (Just assume any other crew members are expendable, as they of course prove to be.) Unluckily for the expedition crew and the audience, they fish out the flailing capsized family, right away making the whole cast way bigger than it needs to be.
The billionaire wants blood samples of live dinosaurs from the biggest beasts of air, land, and sky for the pharmaceutical nonsense of curing heart disease once and for all. It’s a claim that is as sketchy as the billionaire himself, as we all know that whatever is produced from the blood of dinos will simply line the pockets of a handful of already filthy rich people.
After blatantly copying some scenes from Jaws with none of the thrills or character-building, whoever is left alive ends up shipwrecked on the targeted island that had been abandoned some 17 years earlier, a land where dinosaurs were experimented-upon and graphed together. This resulted in mutated, genetically-suspect beasts that would make your resident 5-year-old dinosaur expert raise their hand and ask questions.
Peril ensues.
Renowned Oscar-caliber actors (Mahershala is a two-time winner, for goodness sakes!) try to give the poorly written script some heft and gravitas and just simply fail. The plot throws in all tried-and-true emotionally-triggering devices—A child in peril! A colleague dying violently! Mentions of PTSD!—to see if anything sticks. An action sequence featuring a T. rex and a rubber raft should be a centerpiece of action, but seems to mosey in dread-free slow-motion. Meanwhile, John Williams’ constant, insistent score earnestly tries to pump your blood or wring a tear. Yet with all of this sound and fury, you feel nothing. Really. Nada.
There are notably strange continuity issues; things that you start to notice since your brain isn’t otherwise occupied. For instance, a person will conveniently have a life jacket on when they didn’t have one seconds earlier. A valuable case will be handcuffed to a character’s hand, then a scene later it’s not. The survivors discover that a beast is attracted to light, so in next scene they use a massive searchlight to look for someone in the dark. I’d like to think Johnasson’s white tank top suddenly becoming olive green was a nod to Die Hard, but I think that’s giving the movie too much credit. I could go on, but I really don’t feel like it anymore.
During my screening, there was a row of women chatting loudly with each other using non-inside voices. Several times, people near them turned and hissed an angry, “SHHHH!” in their general direction. This was easily the most tense moment of the movie. I nervously clenched my armrests, hoping a fight would break out, giving me at least something memorable to take away from the film. But alas, the moment deflated, just like the lame-ass movie on the screen.
