5/10
Family friendly and Disappointing
23 October 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Let me initially say that before watching it, I had already heard quite a bit about this movie, so I might have been prepared for some of the letdowns it has to offer. That being said, I still "enjoyed" it as a simple piece of action: but please don't expect more.

In the beginning of this movie we meet the two brothers Gray; a hyperactive walking encyclopedia, and Zach; an indifferent teenager with "girl issues", whom are sent to visit their aunt Claire. Claire happens to be a highly organized, suit and stiletto wearing, and in every sense of the words; professional manager of the theme park which is Jurassic World.

Initially the kids are left with her incompetent assistant while Claire is busy entertaining investors, handling the financial situation of the park, and also greeting the visiting owner of the park, the idealistic Mr. Masrani, who has come to witness his new main attraction, "The Indominus Rex". "Indominus" was created in a lab, as a hybrid cross of a number of species, but mainly the notorious "Tyrannosaurus Rex"; this was mainly done to secure a steady stream of visitors to the park.

While inspecting the cage now containing a fully grown Indominus, Mr. Masrani feels it might be a good time to do a critical final inspection of the security measures taken to encage this huge, highly intelligent and murderous beast; Claire is therefor sent to retrieve Owen.

Owen is your run of the mill, motorcycle repairing, leather west wearing, former navy seal with a big heart for living things, guy: Who also just happens happens to be an authority on breeding and training velociraptors!

Second upon arriving at the new facility, Claire and Owen concludes that Indominus has escaped the cage, and everybody carelessly walks into the cage, just to be confronted by the hiding predator. Some ingenious designers decided to put a manual override button on the inside of the fence, and in no time has a panicking security guy opened the gate, and hence released this fierce monster.

Besides the obvious idiotic idea of even opening a public park with 20.000+ visitors and freely roaming dinosaurs that are only restricted by an occasionally failing "implanted chip": we, the audience are from here on out witnessing an endless series of progressively worse ideas and even more clichéd cinematic plot turns.

Let's make Mr. Masrani a novice helicopter pilot who thinks he's an Air-general!

Let's have the two lead characters have a history of a really bad date, and the still end up together!

Let's have a beautiful bonding moment between the two brothers after jumping from a cliff, oh and lets also try to make everybody feel bad for them because their parents are getting divorced (or well, one of the kids googled something, and now the parents are apparently divorcing each other)!

Let's have a secret weapons development facility directly in the middle of a family theme park. And let the shady "weapons researcher" do a hostile takeover of the theme park, and turn the entire thing into a real live weapons test… with 20.000+ people in the park!

Also let's have none of the employees panic and raising the alarm, or in any way question the fact that some of them are sent out into the forest, with stun-guns and nets, to capture an enormous monster.

Oh, and finally let's have a Tyrannosaurus Rex in a cage, which by the push of a single button opens directly into the main street of the theme park!

This piece of cinematic pop culture is so filled with plot-holes, that by the end of the movie I couldn't even remember half of them anymore.

There are though, still a few worthy scenes to notice: When the kids wander into the original buildings of Jurassic park, they walk past the notorious "Velociraptor painting on the wall": a scene I specifically enjoyed from the first movie. And also in the final minutes of the movies, during the big fight of "Indominus VS. everybody else" there were some quite good action sequences.

All in all, I have to say I was a bit disappointed. I though, perhaps a bit naively, that this movie would try to honor the legacy of the original Jurassic Park, but instead of a dark, thrilling and suspenseful movie with dangers lurking around every corner, we are presented with a somewhat cheerful, family friendly, PG13 "Action" movie with the occasionally cheesy one-liners.
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