#but then you've got Sam Neill and Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum and THE GREAT ESCAPE'S SIR RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH

[swan2swan]

True Jurassic franchise enlightenment comes through realizing that the Jurassic World script is five times tighter than Jurassic Park's, and that's okay.

[rookie-critic]

Jurassic World: Dominion (2022, dir. Colin Trevorrow) - review by Rookie-Critic

Jurassic World: Dominion was straight down the middle ok. It abandons entire plot lines for giant swaths of the film before coming back and trying to conclude them as more of an afterthought. Also, speaking of afterthoughts, the dinosaurs are quite literally a secondary concern away from the main plot line, which revolves around some giant locusts and Maisie Lockwood, the little girl from Fallen Kingdom. Blue, possibly the most interesting thing from this new Jurassic trilogy, has maybe 5 minutes of screen time, which is a huge bummer and slightly insulting to the audience that's been made to like this velociraptor enough that she's used as a way to sell these films. As much as I like Bryce Dallas Howard, I'm honestly over Claire, and by extension Owen. I'm starting to realize that Chris Pratt is really only good at playing a certain character (*cough*Star-Lord*cough*). It's a bad sign when your two lead characters were only halfway interesting in the first World movie, and past that they've been mostly just boring. Additionally, try as they might, they still managed to under-utilize BD Wong's Dr. Henry Wu, who once again seems like he's going to be very important, but ends up with minimal to barely any screen time. I'll give them credit for trying slightly harder with his character in this installment, but it's too little too late.

So, with all that working against it, let me also mention what I felt like worked in this one. Firstly, what a genius move to take the smallest character from the original film, Lewis Dodgson (just imagine Wayne Knight shouting "DODGSON! DODGSON! WE GOT DODGSON HERE!!"), and make him the primary antagonist of the film. Brilliant move, and even more brilliant getting Campbell Scott to play the role. Also, the new characters, Mamoudou Athie's Ramsay Cole and DeWanda Wise's Kayla Watts are welcome additions to the cast, and their performances are bright spots in the movie. Finally, and this should be the main takeaway here, the original trio is back! Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm are all back together and, I will say this with full confidence, they keep this movie from being a train wreck. Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum's chemistry is undoubtedly electric, even after almost exactly 29 years to the day. The entire first half of the film, every single time we'd cut back to whatever Owen or Claire were doing, I would just think "can we get back to Ellie and Alan's story line, please?" Looking at them when they're all on screen together again for the first time in almost three decades has a certain degree of undeniable greatness to it that makes it hard to hate.

In summation, would I recommend this? The short answer is not particularly, but if you've invested time in watching all of this franchise, you can commit another couple of hours to seeing the old crew back together again. That part is so worth it.

Score: 5/10

Currently streaming on Peacock.

A+ for putting feathery boys in this one. D- for them not really getting to do much.