It may be time to let sleeping dinosaurs lie.
Despite a strong cast and a pedigree of prehistoric proportions, Jurassic World Rebirth is surprisingly weak, with a story more fractured than a fragile fossil trampled by a T-Rex.
Five years after Jurassic World: Dominion (2022), the world’s remaining dinosaurs aren’t faring too well with the planet’s evolving ecology. The only place they can survive, if not exactly thrive, is in isolated tropical climates— hot and sticky biospheres that people are forbidden to venture into. So of course, a group of people venture in there. Some by choice, others by happenstance. Some make it out. Others become dinner.
The gist of the story is this: Creepy Big Pharma guy Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) hires mercenary covert ops expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to lead an extraction team into dangerous Dino territory. The mission: to extract DNA from three colossal creatures whose genetic material could hold the key to a major medical breakthrough in heart disease research. Ka-ching!
Okay, that story might work in and of itself, especially since you’ve got Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali as Zora’s wingman Duncan, and the insanely versatile Jonathan Bailey as nerdy paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis. But rather than be able to embrace the Loomis character, I was constantly distracted by his American accent. Why couldn’t they let the Wickedly brilliant (and British) Bridgerton bloke be a UK scientist???
And then there’s the needless subplot. A father on a sailing trip with his two daughters and a boyfriend are capsized by some sort of mutant seafaring dinosaur. Zola and team rescue the family and take them along for the rest of their mission. It’s like rescuing the family from “Land of the Lost” only to put them in greater danger. Two disjointed tales of survival ensue, converging near the end, as whomever is left alive struggles to get off the island (and theoretically save billions of people from heart disease).
It’s summer. July 4th weekend. Air conditioning is at a premium. So Jurassic World Rebirth will do just fine. The movie isn’t bad; just meh.
In theaters July 2. Rated PG-13. Runs 2:14. And has some scary stuff that could be too much for the younger kids.