You might ask yourself why ambitious scientists and entrepreneurs would keep investing in living, breathing dinosaur theme parks when the results always seem to get a tad bloody. The answer, as delineated in Jurassic World, can be traced to one of Steven Spielberg's favorite themes: the melding of greed and ambition. Which, come to think of it, also sums up the summer movie season pretty well.
Spielberg directed the first two Jurassic Park movies; he's merely an executive producer on this, the fourth. But his tyrannosaurus-size footprint is all over Jurassic World, from the bad guys who place ignoble goals over public safety, to the subtext that emphasizes lost innocence and the sanctity of the nuclear family. And, of course, the really cool dinosaurs, who remain the chomping, sprinting, soaring stars of the show.
The latest scientific/capitalistic Jurassic overstep involves a genetic hybrid dino-monster, which, naturally, escapes its theme park cage in the first half of the movie. A raptor wrangler (Chris Pratt, always an invitingly jocular action hero presence) sees the dinosaurs as intelligent animals. A conniving military contractor (Vincent D'Onofrio) sees them as a potential weapon. The park's owner (Irrfan Khan) sees them as an investment. The woman who runs the place (Bryce Dallas Howard) sees them as a job. Only her two nephews - bless the innocent children - view them with wide-eyed wonder.
A movie like Jurassic World must pass one basic test: Stay diverting, if not spectacularly entertaining, even through the most ridiculous scenarios. Mission accomplished. The dino-monster crashes into the park's aviary -- "a containment anomaly," in the parlance of a public-address security announcement -- and unleashes a torrent of pterodactyls that flap, swoop and bite with abandon that would make Hitchcock's Birds proud. The raptors, militarized in an effort to bring down the big prey, go hunting through a dark forest, only to suffer from an unfortunate case of divided loyalties. There's plenty to gape at in Jurassic World.
Forty years ago, Spielberg unleashed Jaws, the story of a beach town mayor who doesn't want to close the beach and miss out on the big tourist season. The bad guys in Jurassic World want to keep messing with dinosaur DNA for similar profit motives. (Side note: The military contractor is the current bad guy of choice in the movies. See also Aloha. Or better yet, don't).
But the most penetrating moment in Jurassic World comes courtesy of a towering herbivore dinosaur brought down by the great beast. Pratt and Howard approach the noble creature, laid out on in a field, and stroke its face. It heaves a few heavy sighs, its eyes filled with awareness of its mortality, and it breathes its last. It's a tremendously powerful scene that borrows a lesson from the movie that created this entire genre, 1933's King Kong: Through facial expression and precise movement, a gargantuan creature can convey piercing emotion.
The jokes will continue to write themselves: How high is the dino park insurance premium these days? Is genetic dinosaur splicing the most dangerous move in movies outside of messing with Liam Neeson's family? But Jurassic World, for all its predictable, requisite mayhem, still manages to maintain a human touch.
Jurassic World (B+)
Directed by Colin Trevorrow. PG-13 (intense sequences of science fiction action and peril). 124 mins. In wide release.
