JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
Early in Jurassic World Rebirth, a brontosaurus lies tangled in light poles near the Brooklyn Bridge while New Yorkers wind past it like just another wreck in the roadway.
That’s the problem with this film in a nutshell. The seventh film in this long-running franchise has no sense of wonder anymore about these phenomenal creatures, just a feeling that no one knows what to do with them.
After 2022’s disappointing Jurassic World Dominion, where giant locusts flew off with the plot, Jurassic World Rebirth jettisons the characters and complications of the previous Jurassic World films entirely. Our inhospitable climate and diseases have made a narrow area along the equator the only place where dinosaurs still roam the Earth, the film tells us. As they’ve petered out, public interest in them unbelievably has waned.
This convenient development from original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp (Black Bag) saves the filmmakers from what 2015’s Jurassic World teased yet never delivered: dinosaurs running loose in the modern world, San Diego from Jurassic Park 2 notwithstanding.
Into this blasé atmosphere drops black-ops specialist Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson, The Phoenician Scheme). Pharmaceutical rep Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend, The Phoenician Scheme) promises her millions to retrieve DNA samples from three dino species that could create a cure for heart disease. The dinosaurs’ location is typically off limits to humans and also near a deserted lab where mutated dinosaurs escaped after product placement foiled the security system.
Joining this fetch quest are Zora’s friend, ship captain Duncan (Mahershala Ali, Leave the World Behind), paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey, Wicked), and a few other people for cannon fodder.
If that’s not enough people in peril, the mercenaries cross paths with Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, The Lincoln Lawyer), a father taking his two daughters and his daughter’s boyfriend sailing right through Mosasaurus territory. Lots of screaming and near-chomping ensues. The PG-13 rating doesn’t place daughters Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Isabella (Audrina Miranda) in danger for long, even giving Isabella a merchandising opportunity in a small dino buddy that she stuffs with candy. Boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono) provides some dim-bulb comic relief, along with a chance for Reuben to pass along fatherly advice that wandered in from another movie.
Director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Creator) handles the mechanics of the action scenes well enough, with some setups, particularly in the last third, reminiscent of his 2010 feature debut Monsters. Shot in Malta and Thailand, the film showcases the grandeur of this natural beauty alongside the scale of some of the creatures, thanks to cinematographer John Mathieson.
But the more Jurassic World Rebirth leans into genetic mutations, the less impressive it becomes. A Mosasaurus breaching the surface like a whale looks thrilling, as does a protective Quetzalcoatlus, but the D-Rex is a hodgepodge with too many arms, a bulbous head, and a weakness the characters discover on the fly. (Its proportions also seem to change size as the situation warrants, chomping through a person and a helicopter in similar fashion, my screening guest noticed.) Aside from that Mosasaurus, a sleepy T. rex, and a snuggly pair of herbivores, the creatures evoke little awe from the characters in their presence, regardless of John Williams’s famous theme.
The emotional connection for these characters isn’t there, either, although Ali and Johansson each tear up at least once during what the script provides as backstory.
The original Jurassic Park succeeded as a summer action film while at least arguing that people messed with something just because they could without thinking of the consequences. There are no broader consequences here, just a cash grab, which even one character points out, noting who among the team is here for the money and who’s desperate.
Ultimately, Jurassic World Rebirth contains more metaphors about why it doesn’t work than moments that do. Perhaps it’s time not for a rebirth but a thoughtful hibernation.
