As a thirtysomething who was terrified as a kid with the magnificent ‘Jurassic Park’ and its equally fantastic and underrated sequel, I have not been able to get along with the ‘Jurassic World’ saga till the date. Despite their commendable efforts to offer different experiences, full of personality and executed with great precision, both films left me a certain amount of disenchantment seeming to me all too aware of the legacy they were striving to honor.
If to this starting point we add the fact that a good part of the promotional campaign for the closing of the trilogy has chosen to bet strongly on that nostalgic component so in vogue in the Mecca of cinema, it is understandable that my path towards cinema has been dominated by laziness and by almost zero expectations that anticipated a probable obscene and soulless exploitation of the memories of three decades ago.
After leaving the screening of ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ with a gigantic smile, I can’t help but swallow my unfounded mistrust, because this jurassic summer revelry It has ended up giving me on a silver platter 146 of the funniest minutes that are going to happen this year in our movie theaters. Two and a half hours of the purest adventure without filterswithout brakes and with a heart as big as the head of a T-Rex.
Welcome to Jurassic (now yes) World
Perhaps one of my main drawbacks towards the franchise that started in 2015 is derived from the great responsibility of carrying a word as ambitious and grandiloquent as “world” in its title; but in the end, after the covert remake of the original and the exercise of horror to the Hammer corseted in a mansion of ‘The fallen kingdom’, ‘Dominion’ Lives Up To Its Man With Its Large-Scale Epic.
Do you remember when a crossover between ‘Fast & Furious’ and ‘Jurassic World’ was rumored? Well, this movie is the closest thing that our eyes will probably see. And it is that in this past show in laps and without any self-imposed limitation there is room for international espionage in the purest James Bond style, the trademark terror, action at full speed and even the environmental thriller. A wonderful madness surprisingly well balanced.
This impossible cocktail finds in its functional —no more— script what is probably its weakest component. The script, which does not leave much room for surprises at the plot level once it places all the pieces on the board in its calculated first act, is too easy to predict and is not without clichés – that Apple CEO-like villain. .—, but manages to balance action, exhibition and comedy with an enviable pulse.
However, where the writing of Emily Carmichael and Colin Trevorrow shines the most is in its union of two generations of heroes —and spectators— without falling into the rancid commercial claim. The return of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum is not limited to strictly advertisingand gives its characters great weight in the plot, being active, putting parallel subplots on track that converge, and displaying a chemistry that remains intact.
Of course, rounding a blockbuster worthy of the biggest of screensthere is an impeccable visual treatment, with set pieces planned, shot and edited with an exquisite taste and sense of kinetics, with an overwhelming production design and photography direction courtesy of the veteran John Schwartzmann which mines gold in a suitable 2:1 aspect ratio. The icing on an overwhelming cake that could well be classified —tied with ‘The Lost World’— as the best installment in the saga since Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic.
