Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)

 

This is less of a review and more of a PSA: if you value your time and have a fleeting amount of it to spend, for the love of god don't waste it on this awful film. I only watched this movie because I was on a plane and I still feel as though I could have spent my time better. This soulless cash grab of a dino flick is even more banal and pointless than the last two (which I really thought was impossible.

I would go into more spoilery details because I would honestly be doing everyone who hasn't seen it yet a favor, but the movie is so lacking in memorable moments (outside of the laughably bad acting and writing) it isn't even worth spoiling (you already know this movie is on some serious BS when the film starts with a single empty Snickers wrapper bringing a multi-billion dollar experimental scientific facility to its knees). One saving grace for this disaster of a film could have been some satisfying dinosaur-eating-humans scenes but unfortunately we don't even really get anything memorable in that department either, at least the previous Jurassic World movies could get that right (in at least one of the death scenes our view is completely blocked and we can't even see the person getting eaten. I feel robbed!). 

If you do decide to subject yourself to this movie, then expect to find dialogue full of mind-numbingly unsubtle exposition, characters whose motivations make no sense and don't line up with their actions at all (Scarlett Johansson and her band of merry mercenaries with hearts of gold, but also they want to get rich quick are not doing it for me, I'm sorry) and one of the lamest, dumbest-looking final boss "dinosaurs" I've ever seen; I seriously couldn't decide whether to laugh or be disgusted, (just stick with the T-Rex folks, we don't need to reinvent the wheel here). 

I could overlook some of this nonsense if the movie was at least fun at all and wasn't full of annoying characters (ah look, it's the useless, lazy boyfriend who inexplicably performs heroic actions that you would have never expected from him and somehow earns the trust and respect of his girlfriend's father and don't forget the scared kid who doesn't talk half the time because they are so scared, or the father whose leg is only injured when one of his daughters is in danger, and I already mentioned the mercenaries with hearts of gold *eyeroll*); unfortunately, this movie is a true bore, even the scenes that are borrowed from the original novels fall flat and don't have nearly as much intensity as the books did (I was so looking forward to the T-rex raft chase scene as a fan of the novel, but even that didn't live up to expectations). Everything in this movie just sort of happens because that's what was in the script, if that makes sense. If you find yourself craving a dinosaur flick, do yourself a favor and just watch the original Jurassic Park again, or even the original Jurassic World, heck even the 1960 version of The Lost World would be a better use of your time. 

-Ryan Maples

Rating: 2/10