Jurassic World: Dominion

If you had to choose between facing the possibility of death and watching this film, I think you would rather risk death.

Let’s face it. This film is 2 hours and 26 minutes of increasing agony. Yes, all of the original stars from the previous films are reunited, but it gives the term “reunion” a bad name.

I loved the original Jurassic Park (1993) and found several of the sequels to be fun. But this film forgot to incorporate a meaningful plot.

Sadly, the entire movie focuses on two repeated encounters. First be prepared to watch dinosaurs chase humans to the point where you are left moaning, “Christ, not again!”

Secondly, our aging stars repeatedly leap from buildings and fall from trees yet are never injured. I was left waiting for the admission that paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) had discovered Superman’s Kryptonite during one of his dinosaur excavations.

I won’t bore you with a description of the banal plot. Suffice it to say that our group of stars unite to descend on a dinosaur preserve in Italy. There a company run by Campbell Scott has kidnapped Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), a cloned teenager who had been living with a couple played by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.

An endless struggle ensues that leaves you shaking your head. Sam Neill and Laura Dern join our team in a romantic entanglement that will remind you of a retirement village love story. Forget this file and see Neill in Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) and Ms. Dern in Little Women (2019).

Finally, what makes this film such a mess is the return of Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm. Ignore his arrogance and pay attention to the performances of Dewand Wise and Manoudou Athie. As a skilled pilot and a tech expert, they helped save this film from the cinematic scrap heap.