Bryce Dallas Howard – Memphis Flyer

How many ways can you screw up a dinosaur movie? It seems like a slam dunk. The people are coming for the dinosaurs, so you give them dinosaurs. When you’re not doing that, just point your camera at Jeff Goldblum — because if you’re making a movie about dinosaurs, I assume you’ve paid your Goldblum money.

In attempting a Star Trek: Generations move by uniting the old and new casts of a legacy franchise, Jurassic World: Dominion inadvertently exposes the biggest flaw of the Jurassic Park reboot trilogy: The lack of Jeff Goldblum. The new film’s greatest accomplishment is the completion of Chris Pratt’s quest to render his character Owen Grady completely devoid of personality. The former Navy Seal turned velociraptor whisperer is just there to be good at things like riding motorcycles and wrangling wild theropods, not to feel any pesky emotions. His sole move is to straight-arm dinosaurs into compliance, which he does eight times, by my count, in Dominion. Since appearing in 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Bryce Dallas Howard has come into her own directing career, helming episodes of The Mandalorian, so her performance as former Jurassic Park manager turned dino-rights activist Claire Dearing is predictably checked-out.

Director Colin Trevorrow struggles to fit his expanding cast of heroes into one frame in *Jurassic World: Dominion*.

When Dominion begins, they’re living together in a cabin in rural Montana with Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), the clone of the daughter of OG Jurassic Park researcher Benjamin Lockwood. Instead of instantly dying from the Anthropocine world’s onslaught of pollution and disease, the dinosaurs who escaped from the exploding volcano on Isla Nublar have spread across the planet. This sounds like the basis for a good story. Imagine dinosaurs tearing a swath through the modern world, while our heroes, led by Jeff Goldblum, tries to find a solution that preserves both humankind and dino-kind. It’s the proverbial un-screwable pooch.

Life, in the person of writer/director Colin Trevorrow, finds a way. It turns out that Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) has been spending the years since her 1993 visit to Jurassic Park studying the effects of genetic engineering on the ecology. She’s hot on the trail of a mysterious new species of giant locust that have been bioengineered to eat everything not produced by megacorp Biosyn. This will cause a worldwide famine if she and her old palentologist flame Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill, remarkably well preserved) can’t find proof of the plan. Lucky for them (and us) Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff freakin’ Goldblum) has already infiltrated Biosyn by gaining the trust of its founder Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott, in a Shatnerian performance). Even though dinos are now roaming wild through the woods and plains of the world, Biosyn has gathered a collection of the creatures into a large, protected space — a kind of Jurassic park, if you will — through which our ever-growing collection of heroes will have to navigate in order to save a kidnapped clone, a baby velociraptor, and also the world’s food supply.

Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) faces down Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) in *Jurassic World: Dominion*.

Maybe a more skilled filmmaker would be able to successfully juggle three competing storylines, but the truth is, a skilled filmmaker would know better than to try. The giant locust attack seems to be an attempt at a climate change allegory, which is weird choice for a story that features a world overrun by already allegorical dinosaurs. Were the filmmakers under the impression that we’re begging for a stealth remake of Beginning of the End, the 1957 giant locust movie skewered by Mystery Science Theater 3000? I thought we were here for dinosaurs.

In fairness, there is some crunchy dino-action. The second act features a solid Spielbergian set piece, with trained velociraptor assassins under the command of a smuggler named Santos (Dichen Lachman) chasing a motorcycle-mounted Pratt through the streets of Malta. But even when Trevorrow manages to conjure a string of exciting images, the Adderall-addled script can’t sustain any momentum.

T. Rex searching for snacks in *Jurassic World: Dominion*.

When things do perk up, it’s usually because of Jeff Goldblum. He effortlessly dominates the screen, delivering schtick with his trademark sly wink at the audience. I was reminded of the infamous story of when Michael Caine, another actor who was always the best thing in bad movies, was asked about appearing in another rock-bottom sequel of a great Steven Spielberg film, Jaws: The Revenge. “I haven’t seen it, and by all accounts, it is terrible,” he said. “But I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”

Last weekend, while $150 million worth of viewers were flocking to see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, I happened across a Jaws marathon on TV. The original, 1975 Jaws is, of course, an incredible piece of filmmaking. Steven Spielberg’s eye for a shot is so great it looks accidental. His sense of timing, both comic and horror, is impeccable. He’s great with actors and understands how to construct a sympathetic character in as few beats as possible. Most importantly, he can literally make you feel any way he wants you to feel on command. Jaws is still thrilling as ever after 43 years.

Jaws 2, released in 1978, was directed by Jeannot Szwarc. He has the dubious distinction of being the first in a long line of filmmakers who have tried and failed to reproduce the Spielbergian magic. All the parts are there — the shark, the John Williams music, the doomed beachgoers — but they somehow fail to work together in quite the same way. At least it’s not incompetently bad, like Jaws 3-D, or cynical and insulting, like the infamous Jaws: The Revenge.

If one were a cynical web critic in 2018, one could sum up Spielberg’s 1993 film Jurassic Park with “What if Jaws, but dinosaurs?” But if there’s one thing Spielberg is not, it’s cynical. His sense of curiosity and fun are infectious. You wanna see a T-rex eat a guy sitting on a toilet? Sure you do. And your uncle Steven can make it happen. The film, credited with ushering in the age of CGI, and its sequel The Lost World, work mostly because Spielberg really likes dinosaurs.

2015’s Jurassic World worked, to the extent it did, because director Colin Trevorrow really liked Jurassic Park. He, along with Jurassic Park III and Captain America: The First Avenger director Joe Johnston are among the few who have actually managed to pull off a convincing Spielberg imitation, and was rewarded with a whopping $1.6 billion at the box office. Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom director J.A. Bayona, on the other hand, falls into the Jaws 2 trap. The opening sequence features two rubes in a submersible retrieving a tooth from the submerged skeleton of Indominous Rex, the genetically engineered super dino that ate so many theme park goers in the last go round. Their consumption by a mammoth mosasaurus is handled in tasteful suspense, but by the time the scene’s over, Bayona goes full Sharknado. It’s the first of many fabulously expensive sequences that play like groaner dad joke versions of classic Jurassic Park gags. The script, by Trevorrow and his writing partner Derek Connolly, never met a cliche it didn’t like. You like the part where the T-rex saves the day with a mighty roar? Uncle Bayona gives you two of those, unearned. A hacker says “I’m in!” A suited money guy yells at a scientist to explain a technical matter “In English!”

What keeps Fallen Kingdom from scoring a Revenge on the Jaws Scale are the leads. Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing is now the head of the Dinosaur Protection Group. She’s gravely concerned, because Isla Nublar, the island overrun with thunder lizards after the Jurassic World theme park suffered a massive insurance liability event, is about to be destroyed by a convenient volcano. She is enlisted by Sir Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) and his majordomo Eli Mills (Rafe Spall) to rescue as many dinos as possible. She finds velociraptor whisperer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) building a cabin in the Canadian Rockies, as all guys who were “the best” do when they retire because of the horrible consequences of their actions. Pratt and Howard work well together, despite looking mildly bored at times. At least they’re better than their newcomer sidekicks, paleo-veterinarian Dr. Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda) and Franklin Webb (Justice Smith), an IT specialist who at one point tries to use his l33t haxor skillz to fix the air conditioning. They often disappear without explanation, reappearing only to bicker unconvincingly.

Fallen Kingdom suffers from a distinct, and fatal, lack of Jeff Goldblum. He never even stands up during his cameo as Dr. Ian Malcom, the franchise’s voice of reason. Perhaps more Goldblum would have helped the 128-minute running time go down a little smoother. As it is, I’m with the little girl in the row in front of me who kept asking her mom, “Is it going to be over soon?”