Jurassic World Dominion Review: Not So Dino-Mite

Into this reality is thrust more characters than a film adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel. From the new films (2015's "Jurassic World" and 2018's "Fallen Kingdom") you've got Chris Pratt's don't-call-me-Indiana Owen Grady and Howard's no-longer-in-high-heels Claire Dearing; from the OGs (1993's "Jurassic Park," 1997's "The Lost World," and 2001's lazily-titled "Jurassic Park III"), you've got Dern's Ellie Sattler, Neill's Alan Grant, and Goldblum's smarmy Ian Malcom, all amusingly wearing what are essentially the same clothes. The dinosaurs may have evolved, it seems, but their desire for khaki and cargo pants has not.

For most of the film, these storylines run on parallel tracks. Owen and Claire are attempting to recover young Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), who has been kidnapped and flown halfway around the world; a plucky pilot (Wise) makes the traveling party a constantly-imperiled threesome. The film keeps cutting between this storyline and that of Sattler and Grant, who are determined to take down the locusts with some sly help from Malcolm. Both these storylines orbit around Campbell Scott's Lewis Dodgson, an ethically-dodgy innovator so clearly supposed to be Tim Cook that you half expect Donald Trump to cameo and refer to him as "Lewis Apple."

Eventually, all these characters converge, and this is where the film gets really interesting. Multiple reaction shots offer the opportunity to study how six very different actors all stare "in amazement" at the same CGI focal point; Goldblum smirks, Pratt looks like a kid on Christmas morning, and Dern smolders. The best part of any "Jurassic" movie — when one expert explains to another expert which dinosaur they've just encountered, offering "Dinosaur Train"-like trivia for our benefit — is teased a bit when Pratt and Neil both deliver the same line, acknowledging they essentially served the same plot purpose 20 years apart. Such humor goes a long way in a film where we are expected to believe dinosaurs have been trained to kill anybody marked by a laser pointer, to the extent that they will pursue them endlessly, over countless miles.