Review: ‘Jurassic World’ was a lot of fun to watch

It’s been more than 20 years since the events of the original “Jurassic Park,” and billionaire Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) has taken over the late John Hammond’s dream and is now operating a fully functioning dino-theme park on the same island called Jurassic World. To boost attendance, he authorizes the creation of a genetically engineered dinosaur the size of a tyrannosaurus rex but with much more intelligence. When the new dinosaur, the Indominus rex, escapes, it’s up to Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), the park manager, and Owen (Chris Pratt), the raptor trainer, to rescue her nephews and stop the rampaging dinosaur before it’s too late.

“Jurassic World” is definitely a fun and enjoyable movie and is a return to greatness for the “Jurassic Park” franchise. We watched the original “Jurassic Park” when we were about 10 and absolutely loved that film, but the following two films were never able to regain the magic of the first. We were a bit leery going into this movie, but we’re very happy to say that “Jurassic World” more than exceeds our expectations and is a worthy successor to “Jurassic Park.”

Pratt steals the show for us. He does a fantastic job playing Owen, a quirky ex-military velociraptor wrangler. Even though he plays a much more straight character than we are used to seeing from him, we feel he did an excellent job. We do regret not watching this movie in 3-D, for we feel it would’ve been a blast having our faces almost get bitten off multiple times.

What Works

For us this movie was a lot of fun to watch, especially in a full theater where everyone screamed when a dinosaur jumps out and cheered when the heroes escape by the skin of their teeth. Our favorite parts of the film are the special effects. All of the companies in charge of the special effects in this production deserve an Oscar. The dinosaurs look very realistic. They also do a good job of paying homage to the original “Jurassic Park.” We love when they find the original visitor center covered in overgrown vines and other detritus, including the remnants of the Jurassic Park banner, which is used to make a torch along with an old dinosaur bone. Pratt and Howard do a stellar job in this film. Pratt’s Owen is unflappable in the face of danger and is the voice of common sense and reason throughout the film. We also enjoy Howard’s transformation from an uptight business savvy park manager to the caring aunt and heroine.

What Doesn’t Work

One of the problems we have with this film is its predictability. The movie doesn’t leave you any surprises and we guessed the plot about a third of the way through the movie. Near the beginning a security guard, who has been ignoring the Indominus rex, decides to go into its cage to look for her. We wonder what’s going to happen next? Another thing that bugged us a bit is that every time characters escape death, they dramatically celebrate it, except Owen, and it just gets annoying after a while. At one point the two nephews are being chased by the Indominus rex and escape after jumping off a waterfall and holding their breath underwater until the dinosaur leaves. When they crawl back onto land, they start laughing about the scary waterfall jump and it just doesn’t seem to fit because they were literally inches from being eaten alive.

This movie will probably be the year’s biggest blockbuster and is on its way to becoming the first billion-dollar movie of the year. This is a fun movie to see with the family as long as your children are old enough for the scarier bits. Although it didn’t fully blow us away, we think it is a triumphant return to the series and we would still pay to go see it again in the theaters. We give this film a solid 8 out of 10.

This story was originally published June 18, 2015 at 1:53 PM with the headline "Review: ‘Jurassic World’ was a lot of fun to watch."