Jurassic World Dominion (2022) – film review

Wow, what a disappointment this film was. There won’t be any major spoilers in this review but wow, what a huge disappointment.

In passing, we had McDonalds first and ice cream in the cinema (eaten before the trailers finished – standard) so the evening definitely wasn’t a waste – not unless you count a large Big Mac meal and two scoops of Baskin Bobbins a waste and I certainly don’t.

So the film was overly long at two and a half hours – of course this could be forgiven if it were any good but it wasn’t – and this is coming from a fan of the Jurassic World franchise. This is coming from a fan of pretty much any creature feature. This is coming from someone who has seen RAMPAGE twice and still wants to watch it again. I’m certainly no snob (as regular readers will know!) and generally any movie with big monsters is good with me.

It started great – but the greatness only lasted five minutes, literally. For those of you who don’t know, the last Jurassic World movie (Fallen Kingdom) ended with all the dinosaurs escaping captivity and freely making their way around the planet. So basically humankind had to accept the fact we’d be living among the dinosaurs and Jeff Goldblum did a speech and said “welcome to Jurassic World”.

A very exciting premise for the third film I’m sure you agree. Dinosaurs roaming the modern world – this could go ANYWHERE and I imagined them climbing high rise buildings and terrorising cruise liners whilst eating surfers or stampeding down the Las Vegas strip causing more destruction than at the end of Con Air.

But no, this is not what happened. They showed very, very briefly how the dinosaurs had infiltrated the planet (not really explaining how they crossed continents but could have let that slide) and just when you were thinking oh cool I like this, out came the fun sponge (I used to call my old boss a fun sponge) and as the minutes rolled by I began to feel more and more grumpy and more and more cynical. What was this shit??

The plot was just so bad. This film, which let me remind you had ANY POSSIBILITY IN THE WORLD decided to rehash the same old formula of a fucking island and a fucking science lab. How completely boring. Island and science lab?? Are you having a laugh? This was supposed to be World Dominion!!!!!!! WORLD DOMINION!!!

How cool is this scene below? How cool is it and how cool is the sea creature dinosaur?

Well this very cool sea creature dinosaur is only in the film for thirty seconds and what we’re given for the duration is a completely boring storyline about saving a kid from some bad guys and an evil scientist on an island. At one point it stops feeling much like a dinosaur movie even and more like a low rent action as Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard jump on planes like World War Z and tackle enemies like Liam Neeson in Taken 3 (the worst Taken obviously). Even the humorous dialogue sounded (surprisingly) forced and unfunny, not to mention some new and totally pointless characters we’re supposed to care about but obviously can’t, no matter how pretty there are.

This was really the coolest scene in the film and it was only some insects for crying out loud. In fact, the giant locusts WERE the coolest thing in the film apart from maybe Jeff Goldblum (and they are only some insects for crying out loud). Hey wait… Jeff Goldblum and insects? I see some kind of collaboration thing going on there…

ANYWAY, I am conscious of what a moaning myrtle I sound and to be honest, it’s not like me to be that critical of any film but what disappointed me was just the sheer wasted opportunity this whole thing was. I re-watched Fallen Kingdom recently and it literally sets you up for the ‘dinosaurs living amongst us’ thing. Then this happened. So disappointing. So boring. Such a let down.