‘Jurassic World Rebirth' review: Another embarrassing dino retread

New York Post

2 days ago

movie review JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH
Running time: 134 minutes. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of violence/action, bloody images, some suggestive references and language). In theaters July 2.
Sixty-five million years.
That is how long the 'Jurassic' film series has been schlepping along.
I am quite certain of this.
The audience is positively fossilized by the end of the seventh movie: 'Jurassic World Regurgitation.' Sorry. 'Rebirth.' It's 'Rebirth.'
What a misleading title. The once-great franchise is hardly reborn from the amber this time. It's slammed by an asteroid yet again.
The sheer inanity of 'Retread''s exposition is remarkable.
We're informed that, during the past five years, humanity has grown weary of dinosaurs. Bored, tired, over it. Ten-ton ferocious lizards are spoken of like fidget spinners or Palm Pilots.
And, in this half-decade, the previously extinct beasts came to the stark realization that North America does not have the ideal climate for them.
Even though just one horrible movie ago they were excitedly galloping through the Great Plains.
So, like Canadians in winter, they've mostly headed down to the equator.
4 'Rebirth' is little more than an embarrassing retread of old ideas.
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Per the usual schtick, some unlikable morons must jet from New York City to some perilous tropical island, even though they obviously shouldn't.
The dumb-dumbs du jour are Scarlett Johansson's Zora, some sort of calculating mercenary, and Jonathan Bailey, as an exceedingly rare male model paleontologist named Henry. A pyrite Goldblum.
These folks, some of the blandest characters in the entire 'Jurassic' series, will be paid $10 million to secure blood samples from the most massive air, water and land dinosaurs. Big Pharma needs the vials to cure heart disease.
Extraordinary.
4 Zora (Scarlett Johansson) and Henry (Jonathan Bailey) are some of the weakest characters in the entire 'Jurassic' franchise.
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To kick off their journey on a chipper note, Zora and team leader Duncan (Mahershala Ali) somberly reminisce about their dead friends and family members. The depressing scene does not succeed in making us like them. In fact, it made me miss Téa Leoni from 'Jurassic Park 3.'
They're eventually joined by Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a dolt who's taken his two daughters and one's stoner boyfriend, Xavier (David Iacono), on a sailing trip through waters known to be full of giant killer reptiles. Father of the year.
Too much of 'Revile,' directed by Gareth Edwards of 'Rogue One,' splish-splashes in H2O. When our explorers are boating on the ocean for an interminable chunk, they are attacked by a finned creature — the Snoozeosaurus, an overconfident whale.
Later, when the T. Rex chases Dad, the girls and the pothead up a chlorinated-looking river, they could be at a theme park in the Adirondacks.
4 Rupert Friend, Mahershala Ali and Bechir Sylvain are also along for the ride.
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For some cheap 'aww's, the little girl, Isabella (Audrina Miranda), picks up a cute pet dino and names her Dolores.
All the while, the adventurers gather their specimens. Side characters die. Nobody seems to mind.
Many of the dinos introduced are laboratory hybrids that, while designed to be scary, come off very fake. They don't realistically stomp around with 15,000 pounds of weight. Their scaly skin lacks texture.
All of the special effects appear worse than they did 30 years ago.
And the gobbledygook dialogue from David Koepp, the screenwriter of the fantastic original, is terrible even by the low standards of what's come recently before it.
Gazing out at the wilderness, dazed and confused Xavier says, 'When an old person buys a bed, do they think: 'This is my deathbed'? Because that's what I'm thinking right now.'
It's absolutely what I was thinking.
4 The series should've ended with the previous film — 'Dominion.'
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Rupert Friend plays a pharma rep who tags along. On set, Edwards likely yelled, 'Rupert, you're evil. Action!'
The best part of the movie is John Williams' rousing old themes that bring us back to happier, more entertaining times. He hasn't composed the new score. That's Alexandre Desplat, whose generic and limp contributions could be from the public domain.
Universal and Amblin should have ended this franchise after 2022's appalling 'Dominion,' in which the well was so dry that the main conflict was prehistoric locusts gobbling up crops. The premise has become an overgrown weed, and it's time to put it — and us — out of our misery.
Early on in 'Revolting,' Henry says, 'Nobody cares about these animals anymore. They deserve better.'
Yes. And they deserve better movies.