GRADE: C+
Jurassic World: Rebirth is the seventh entry in the popular franchise that started with Steven Spielberg’s big screen take on the beloved Michael Crichton novel way back in the summer of 1993. Of course, that film would go on to become a box-office juggernaut and depending on which generation of Spielberg fans you talk to, it’s often hailed as one of the Beard’s best films. Alas, as was the case with the Jaws franchise (also started by Spielberg), Jurassic Park should have been a one and done and sadly, Rebirth doesn’t do anything to change that proclamation.
In Jurassic World: Rebirth, 5 years have passed since the last film. Dinosaurs aren’t as popular as they once were as people are slowly losing interest (a metaphor for the movie going experience? Perhaps.) The plot is set in to motion when a couple of mercenaries (played by Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali), a shifty suit (played by Rupert Friend), and a down on his luck dino expert (played by Jonathan Bailey) lead a small crew on a mission to an isolated island in the equatorial region where the end goal is to obtain blood samples from a few prehistoric beasties in an effort to create life-saving drugs. During the journey, this team finds itself detouring (much to the dismay of said shifty suit) by way of a little side rescue mission after receiving a distress signal from a family (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, Audrina Miranda, and David Iacono) stranded at sea. Eventually, all of these folks come together but soon find themselves stranded on an island filled with majestic (and in most cases, dangerous) creatures of the past as clearly, “life found a way.” Will these people make it off the island alive? Hmmm…I wonder…
While Spielberg is back as a consultant, the directing reins have been handed to Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla, The Creator), a thrifty filmmaker who got his start with the low budget sci-fi gem, Monsters. Given his track record for having a hand in modestly budgeted effects-heavy films that often look a lot more expensive than they actually are, Edwards would seem like the ideal choice for this movie and truth be told, this is a handsome production (it was shot on film) with beautiful locations and (mostly) solid special effects. The thing is, if you don’t have a strong foundation to work from, there’s only so much a director can do. Alas, returning screenwriter David Koepp (who adapted the first Jurassic Park as well as The Lost World) is back with a story that isn’t so much a “rebirth” as it is a “remake.” Perhaps that isn’t an entirely fair assessment as this new entry does have all new characters but the beats, as well as more than a few visual cue callbacks, are so familiar that this movie often plays like a Jurassic Park Greatest Hits Collection. Only without the pure joy and wonder of that first film.
Yes, it’s always fun to watch dinosaurs wreaking havoc on the biggest screen possible and it’s also nice to have more intense monster action and scares thrown back into the fold but a lot of the tension this movie does have to offer is undercut by the sheer stupidity of the characters on display. This is never more apparent than a sequence in which one central character decides to auto inflate a raft while standing not but 15 feet away from a sleeping T-rex as a handful of characters stand around and do nothing to stop her. Undoubtedly, there will be plenty of folks out there who will call such a criticism “petty” but know this; That is but one example in a film riddled with seemingly bizarre moments that easily could have been fixed in the writing stage. Be it a Snickers bar wrapper floating (Forrest Gump feather style) into the mechanics of a state of the art lab hydraulics system and causing an epic malfunction, to a group of individuals casually swimming ashore without much care in the world even though not but a minute earlier they had multiple vicious prehistoric creatures right on their tails, to a sequence in which a family seems surprised when their boat is capsized by underwater monsters even though they’re in what they must have known are dino-infested waters. There’s just so much silly stuff going on (even by Jurassic standards) that it’s hard to stay invested and hope for the safety of these characters when common sense doesn’t seem to be in their nature.
Elsewhere, in a painfully pandering attempt to bring something cute to the proceedings, a young girl (well played by Miranda) befriends an adorable baby dinosaur she ultimately names Dolores. Early reactions to this movie have suggested this cute little creature is a scene stealer but from where I’m sitting, E.T., Gizmo, and Grogu she is not. Beyond that, Rebirth isn’t simply content on offering up your basic dinosaurs (watch as the once terrifying raptors are reduced to a bordering-on-comical cameo here.) Instead, once again, the team behind this Jurassic film have opted to throw more mutated dinosaurs into the mix, one of which is abnormally massive (because in a sequel, bigger is always better, right?) and one that is also more than a little bit reminiscent of the Rancor in Return of the Jedi. This is to say that in addition to being overstuffed, familiar, and bafflingly silly at times, Koepp’s screenplay sort of feels like it’s a first draft that everyone just hastily signed off on so that everyone involved could make the July 2025 release date.
As for the performances, it’s clear that Johansson and Ali have star appeal but even though there’s an attempt at giving them a backstory (slight as it may be), these stars don’t shine quite as brightly as you’d hope. Meanwhile, Friend’s attempt at being the Burke of Rebirth just feels a bit generic. Bailey has a few nice moments as the humanitarian of the bunch (not surprisingly, he takes a predictable jab at big pharma) and he even proves to have some chemistry with Johansson but rather than explore this potential spark, Edwards and team just sort of hint at it and ultimately sideline the idea. As for the family, (young Miranda fares best), they feel oddly out of place in this movie. One would assume that they were simply shoe-horned into Rebirth because the filmmakers probably felt like an audience would relate more to a family in peril than they would to the central group of characters that the movie initially introduces us to. That may be, but in the end, these family members are so thinly drawn that this aspect of the film doesn’t really work in the way it was probably intended.
Jurassic World: Rebirth isn’t a terrible movie (hell, it isn’t even the worst Jurassic Park entry; that honor goes to Dominion) but it is a painfully average (and disappointing) one. It has scale and a couple of set pieces that are moderately enjoyable but, in the end, this one never comes close to matching the epicness of the movies it’s so lovingly borrowing from (Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Return of the Jedi, E.T., and Aliens just to name a precious few.) And again, there are so many weird moments and baffling decisions made by certain characters throughout stretches of this movie that rather than calling this another “Adventure 65 million years in the making,” perhaps a better catchphrase for Rebirth would be “Dinos for Dummies.”
