Remember how people were saying the first "Jurassic World" movie was full of affectionate nostalgic call-backs to "Jurassic Park?" Well, the nostalgia moments are absolutely not gone in this installment! What's perplexing is that "Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom" thinks the previous movie must have come out 20 years ago or something, because somehow it really calls attention to itself whenever they affectionately call-back to specific things about "Jurassic World." A movie that came out 3 years ago! Not all nostalgic call-backs are cool easter eggs people! With that little rant out of the way...
If you are looking for movie scenes that scream "Jurassic Park," you will get that here. However, the whole movie doesn't completely rely on that throughout it's full run-time, which I can only predict will not make some Jurassic Park fans happy. I suppose I can admire them for trying something different, but the mistake made by writers Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow, is that they seem to have given us a story that's predominantly only a set-up for the eventual "Jurassic World 3." This movie by itself doesn't really add anything truly new, that hasn't already been introduced in the previous 4 films. Well there is this one thing, but I won't get into that because spoilers.
Are you looking to find more character growth with the characters played by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard here? Keep looking, because you are not going to find that in this movie. Short of some exposition dialogue, both Owen and Claire are essentially the same people from the previous films. They are pretty much just here to continually try and survive dinosaur attacks. The new characters played by Daniella Pineda, Justice Smith, and Isabella Sermon, are decent additions I suppose, but don't really go beyond their archetypal roles. It doesn't help that Justice Smith's character Franklin Webb is kinda cringe worthy.
So what's the point of watching this movie? Director J.A. Bayona. There were some legitimately brilliantly shot moments in this movie that almost justifies the ticket price of seeing this on the big screen. One or two of those moments are probably seared into my brain at how effective they were in getting an emotional reaction out of me. A few other moments were just simply and absolutely perfect for monster movies. Unfortunately the movie has to go out of it's way to create some very embarrassingly contrived eye-rolling convoluted plot turns just to get to those specific great moments. I'm talking plot conveniences, scenes that break my suspension of disbelief, or simply just some really stupid things that happens.
Seriously though, a lot of stupid things happen in this movie. A lot. I just wanted to shout at the screen, "What was the point of all that?!" or "How does that even make sense?!" Sometimes I would want to also yell at the characters and ask "okay now what? You're just going to go do that, and then just ignore it? Where's the appropriate follow through to your actions?! Is there a deleted scene that I'm not seeing here or something?!" Imagine me also saying all that to the writers. Sure enough, the movie was kinda frustrating to watch multiple times over.
With all that said. There are two words that perfectly describes "Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom." Underwhelming, and Dinosaurs. To no one's surprise, the dinosaurs are the best things about this movie. Someone however can argue that the dinosaur shtick is kinda getting too repetitive. Another person might also argue that it already was repetitive in the previous film.
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