Jurassic World really really wants to be a true sequel to the classic Jurassic Park.  Memorable characters, great movie lines, a little philosophical debate about the dangers of man playing god, a build up to make you care about the park and who it effects, fantastic looking dinosaurs, and enough tension and gore to border on calling the film horror.  It could have been all of that.  It should have been all of that.  It wasn’t.  The movie feels more akin to sequels of the 90s: retread the original to make it seem unique while instead resulting in a pale comparison refusing to take any risks.

The characters are joyless.  Bryce Dallas Howard is dressed in all white to evoke Richard Attenboro’s John Hammond, but that’s where the comparison ends.  Gone is Hammond’s twinkle and desire to capture the imagination; Howard’s character is your stereotypical movie business woman, emotionless yet driven, cocooned in her job and oft-putting to everyone, including the audience.  I’ve known my share of successful, intelligent women entrepreneurs.  They all do something remarkably well: they are professional first, yet equally feminine — they talk about their home life or their hobbies; they are disarming and have lots of great working relationships while never losing command of their position. Howard’s business woman was insulting to professional women everywhere.

The kids we are introduced to are nephews of Howard’s character, because check, that’s what the classic original had.  (The whole movie has lots of these deliberate parallels, as if all their inclusion guarantees success).  Howard could give a crap about the kids and doesn’t interact with them until two-thirds of the movie.  The younger brother has lots of high energy and acts, well, like a kid.  He’s great.  The older brother, on the other hand, is brooding and disinterested, caring more about his phone and his girlfriend than his brother or going to see one of the coolest amusement parks ever.  Every scene he was in, I got more and more frustrated in how much of a pill he was.  I know I can hear you say: kids, especially today, act like that and besides, he’s the face of apathy we all share from being tired of seeing dinosaurs.  Except the kid never seems to snap out of it; maybe a couple glimmers here or there but for the most part, the kid is Andy Warhol.  These are the first characters we are introduced to, and they are our eyes through which we experience the park.  How can you evoke awe and wonder in an amazing park when your on screen vessel is an eye-rolling, impatient, petulant dullard.

Except for Chris Pratt’s character, everyone else is pretty much just Joe Worker #5.  Vincent D’onofrio, of course, adds depth to his role and actually has some compelling motivation; however, it’s not long before he himself turns into a mustache twirling dimensionless-character.  Chris Pratt, as usual, is pretty enjoyable, and offers the films best scenes.  He’s not Alan Grant, he’s just an average guy with some skills.

I really wanted the movie to take its time, really explain how the park got back on its feet and became a reality.  Through some of that exposition, we could have had some really fun debate material: not “life finds a way” but how about once you’ve invented the nuclear weapon, what do you do with it?  Like nature, ideas can’t be contained.  If Howard’s character had been more like John Hammond, we could have really seen some emotion of trying to hold on to a legacy, trying to maintain the park’s integrity, and then what happens when it all seems to have been lost — we could have seen a really strong female character holding the park and its people together.  What we got was a tank-top running heroine, literally shedding the image of John Hammond.  Apparently Hollywood feels the tank-top participating heroine who shoots a gun once in a while is the viable alternative to being the damsel in distress.  Regardless, these soulless characters only infect all the nods the film tries to make.  At one point we are shown the original command center from the original Jurassic Park; we see the mural in the original’s banquet room with the velociraptor on the wall, and one of the characters pauses and touches it.  It’s supposed to be this bit of touching nostalgia; instead it’s empty because 1) the characters are so dull and 2) we’ve already kind of done this with the other JP sequels.

The movie doesn’t break any new ground.  We aren’t shown any new dinosaurs; the main big bad is even described as “not a dinosaur”.  Seeming more like Godzilla and endowed with no impressive dinosaur skill power we haven’t seen before (camouflage and infra-red?), at no point did I feel the I-Rex was any more dangerous than any of the other dinosuars we’ve been seen on the islands.  Matter of fact, I-Rex had no bigger feeling of dread or threat than Jurassic Park III’s Spinosaurus.

Jurassic World is marginally better than either of Jurassic Park’s sequels.  Although the characters are definitely more interesting than the Kirbys or Malcolm’s gymnast daughter, don’t go looking for much range in any of the leads.  Formulaic and feeling like it was written by committee: goats, raptors, dinosaur attacking kids in a car: that’s why the original was a classic, right?  Maybe, but I don’t care about any of these characters.  Scenes that are nostalgic or wrought in awe or wonder disappear all too quickly.  All in all, for me JW was a disappointment; that’s not to say others felt that way as it received a fair amount of applause and some rather favorable comments while I was walking out of the theater.

Bottom line: see it for the velociraptors.