Jurassic World bites box office
Product placements outnumber dinos
Jurassic World: Leveraging dinosaurs to sell everything else.
If you were not among the American audience that allowed Jurassic World to take not just a bite out of the box office but the whole thing to the tune of a record $208+ million, you may want to stop reading now. This is your official DINO-SIZED SPOILER ALERT. After the first 20 minutes, you will have seen more products than dinosaurs in Jurassic World. In fact, the movie might not ever catch up on its product to dino ratio throughout its entire run. Even though the product placement is sufficiently explained through the mechanism of the park itself, it is kind of annoying to be hit by Brookstone, Starbucks and other power players in the placement industry during the final dino fight scene. Those who went to see dinosaurs were sadly misled and out of place. This movie checked off everything that made the first movies so good. In fact, there were so many nods to all three films that it felt like they might have cobbled together parts from the first films to make this one a bit cheaper. Idealistic CEO? Check. Messy IT guy? Check. Capable if girly woman in the field? Check. Bad InGen guys complete with irrelevant shooting? Check. Even Ian Malcolm was there – or at least his book was. I kept wondering when the T-Rex would be let loose on L.A. In a park where people view a stegosaurus in the same way that they would view an elephant at the city zoo, it is only fitting the “AHHH” moment is attempted to be generated by the park itself rather than its denizens. While the music soars and the kids look out on the complex, the feeling falls flat. Yet, none of this makes Jurassic World a bad film, especially if you haven’t seen the first three films. The weakest part of the film is Chris Pratt’s lacking ability to provide anything that looks remotely like anger, concern or something more than vaguely not amused sort of. Pratt was great in his role as the Star Lord. However, with people dying and dinosaurs eating them, Pratt just doesn’t have it in him to feel anything but smug competence. He lacks gravitas. However, anytime the dinos take the stage against the humans, it is tense – very tense. Raptors and the Indominus Rex made for killing machines that brought blood and tension to every scene. The last scene will keep you in suspense unless you remember the way that the T-Rex was unceremonious dumped in the third film. Still, it is clever and set up for during the film. Jurassic World isn’t the dino-powerhouse it should have been, but it will do for a movie audience starved for stories that ring the same as other stories from the past 20 years. And by its box office take, that will be just fine. |
Hear Romney's Review of Jurassic World on Movie Pilot.
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