Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom Review

Copyright Universal Pictures/Legendary Pictures 2018

Despite an increased budget and J A Bayona at the helm this is one dino sized disappointment.

The premise of Fallen Kingdom is interesting until you remember that it is the plot to the Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World, well maybe this film plays around with the idea of an abandoned dinosaur theme park a bit more. Well I'm sad to report it doesn't, I'm still confused about what it did.

Hold on, even if all notions of common sense were abandoned, ask yourself who would build a park full of dinosaurs and tourists on a island with an active volcano.

The film takes place a few years after 2015 box office smash hit Jurassic World and see's mostly the same characters return to the abandoned island to rescue the dinosaurs because a volcano is about to erupt on the island. Hold on, even if all notions of common sense were abandoned, ask yourself who would build a park full of dinosaurs and tourists on a island with an active volcano. Putting this major screenwriting blunder behind we see that our main characters from the first film have moved on from the events of Jurassic World. Since this will be a popular film I'll stay away from spoilers but events transpire and we find ourselves back on the island.

This is where you'd expect to find the bulk of the movie right, well no because this only happens for around half an hour of this nearly two hour film. Well what happens in the rest of the film I hear you ask. The dinosaurs are taken to a mansion in Northern California where they have a Mission Impossible style secret bunker under the mansion.

This film is incapable of picking a tone and sticking with it

And that was where I checked out, all hope I had about this being a real Jurassic movie with undertones of dodgy science with the dangers of cloning and playing god were gone and were replaced with sheer disappointment. Admittedly there are some good moments like when the corporate villain starts auctioning off dinosaurs only for one to escape and start attacking and terrorizing various arms dealers and military men.

And that leads me on to my final and most important point, this film is incapable of picking a tone and sticking with it, one moment its trying to be a tense thriller, the next its an action movie and then it changes its mind again as it becomes a comedy with various evil corporate people being tossed around a room like skittles by a triceratops.

If I sound at all angry in this review its because I am, on paper this should be brilliant but in reality its a mixed bag of off tones, jokes that never land and the constant callbacks to the original Jurassic Park just reminded me of a far better film that I could be watching.