MOVIE OF THE WEEK (6/10/22): JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION

"Well, maybe it really just like the shampoo I use?" Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) tries to hide from one of the latest genetically engineered killing machines running amok in a scene in from JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION. Credit: © 2022 Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment.  

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE:

DIRECTOR: Colin Trevorrow

KEY CAST MEMBERS: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Mamoudou Athie, DeWanda Wise, Isabella Sermon, Campbell Scott and B.D. Wong

WEB SITE: https://www.jurassicworld.com/

THE BACK STORY: The culmination (?) of all the previous Jurassic tales, Jurassic World: Dominion finds humans now living in a world where dinosaurs are once again roaming the earth freely, which is a problem. While Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) is living with Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), he is also caring for Blue, his (semi) trained raptor and her offspring, Beta. He and Claire are also caring for Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), which if you remember the revelation found towards the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, makes caring for her a top priority.

Meanwhile, Ellie Sadler (Laura Dern) has been doing more agricultural based studies since she last encountered dinosaurs. Her old on-again, off-again flame Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), however, is seemingly happy digging in the dirt of forgotten lands despite all the live bones currently found inside the dinosaurs around the world. Ellie, however, is ready to call upon Dr. Grant's help as swarms of locusts of biblical proportions have been devastating many farms from Iowa to Texas ... That is, of course, save for the ones seeded with Biosyn products.

What is Biosyn? It's the name of the company run by Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) that has been charged with rounding up most of the more dangerous dinos and taking them to the mountains of France for sanctuary. It's also where Lewis' right hand young apprentice Ramsey Cole (Mamoudou Athie) works ... As does Ellie and Alan's old buddy, chaos theory specialist himself Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldbum). 

And once Maisie and Beta get kidnapped, things start happening that once again leads up to that same age old question: Who has dominion over earth – man, beast ... Or as the case may be, co-writer/director Colin Trevorrow and the rest of the film's production team.

THE REVIEW: Jurassic World: Dominion is a McDonald's built next to a McDonald's across the street from another McDonald's. In other words, you know exactly what you are getting if you've seen any of the previous works. 

Famed Alien director Ridley Scott has a quote that has applied to every Jurassic movie after the original blockbuster, even though he wasn't talking about the latter franchise: "You don't show the monster too many times because you'll get used to him and you never want to get used to him – ever ... The best 

While better than its two most recent predecessors, Dominion proves Scott's quote right over and over again because at this point, there's no magic left to the dinosaurs. They're there to either be cute and harmless or remind you this is why you should be glad they're extinct. That wouldn't be so bad, however, if you didn't see the same tricks that have been utilized again and again throughout the franchise featured several times in Dominion.

These sequences don't come across as homages; they come off as lazy and familiar ... As do many other aspects of the film as well. Intended to be a people pleaser, it just becomes fairly predictable making it's 2 hours and 24 minute runtime well-intentioned but mundane. Howard is still a damsel in distress out of an 80s horror movie, the ties to the first film are a bit too much of a close shave that not even a can of Barbasol can handle. Throw in the unbelievable arc of a character who gets redemption when they should most likely be serving significant jail time and save for one action sequence in the middle of the film and Dominion loses it over its own clunky elements. 

On a positive note, Sermon and DeWanda Wise add some female empowerment to the film that doesn't come off as forced and instead as very needed. Likewise, Goldblum still plays Malcolm great, simply adding more sarcastic wisdom in spots where a joke is needed and the Dern/Neil fans will likely finally get what they want. It's just a shame that Dominion is short on nuance and has no zero new tricks up its sleeve to show us. And the less said about the "How is Apple CEO Tim Cook NOT going to sue the film's producers" for the vibe given off by Scott just based off his character's look alone, the better. 

It took Tom Cruise 36 years to return to the Top Gun franchise and now he is enjoying the best opening weekend of his career (and possibly may go on to enjoy his biggest box office yet. While not a horrible film, there's just nothing special about Dominion that makes you say 'This is the Jurassic we've been waiting for;' instead, it just feels like you're waiting for something new to happen that never does. If the film's production team cared as much as about the franchise as Pratt's character does about Blue and Beta, they might have had something more than just another chapter. It's a people pleaser of a film; whether or not audiences will be pleased to get more of the same with Dominion, however, remains to be seen.

I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks ... And you can't create a new dinosaur movie when you keep using all the same DNA as its predecessors, either.

OVERALL RATING (OUT OF FOUR POSSIBLE BUCKETS OF POPCORN):