Dinosaurs play the believable roles

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/06/2018 (2979 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Back in the days when he was a chubby comic actor on the TV series Parks and Recreation, Chris Pratt — in the role of the underemployed manchild Andy — occasionally adopted the hardboiled persona of “Bert Macklin, FBI” when he felt the need to fantasize about being a hero.

In a way, the role of Owen Brady in the 2015 reboot Jurassic World allowed Pratt his own extended Bert Macklin moment. Brady, remember, is the animal behaviourist who succeeded in training scary raptor dinosaurs to bend to his will in the reinvented Jurassic World theme park. But more importantly, he’s a cool-guy hero, racing through the jungle on a motorcycle alongside raptors, frequently saving the life of park operation manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), and all the while maintaining a gruff, sardonic sense of humour… all out of the Bert Macklin playbook, no doubt.

Brady’s movie heroism is amped up to near ridiculousness in this sequel directed by J.A. Bayona. Even the most enraptured CG-dinosaur fan has to wonder at some point: Where does an animal behaviourist acquire the skills to beat up half a dozen armed mercenaries?

That’s more of a prickly issue than the ethical question posed at the beginning of the film in the wake of the disaster that wrecked the park at the end of Jurassic World. The island of Isla Nublar is beset by a newly active volcano, which threatens to wipe out the island’s remaining population of reconstituted dinosaurs. Though Isla Nublar is off the coast of Costa Rica, the question is posed in a Washington political hearing about whether or not we should rescue the remaining dinos from the pending volcanic apocalypse.

Taking the “no” side of the argument is Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), the genius mathematician from the first two Jurassic Park movies whose job was to play devil’s advocate to the arrogant assumptions of the park’s Disney-like creator. (The late Richard Attenborough makes an appearance in this movie via oil painting.)

Malcolm is drafted here to serve as a voice of doom, reminiscent of a square-up narrator in a mid-20th century educational film, warning of the evils of drugs, premarital sex or speeding. Dinosaurs don’t belong in the 21st century, Malcolm intones, because man, not nature, facilitated their return.

Disagreeing is Claire, who has bounced back from the casualty-strewn disaster of the first film to now advocate for dinosaurs. When the representative (Rafe Spall) of a mysterious billionaire (James Cromwell) comes comes calling with the offer of a rescue operation, Claire signs on, with the understanding that she will use her past romantic relationship with Owen to enlist him in tracking and rescuing the sole surviving raptor, Blue. Mixed in with the action is Cromwell’s young granddaughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon), who suspects some skulduggery is afoot.

The plot facilitates a lot of the action we come to expect from a Jurassic movie. Indeed, whole scenes just seem like competently re-choreographed replays of scenes from past films.

Speaking of which: Shouldn’t there be a moratorium on scenes when human heroes are rescued from certain death at the last minute by the intervention of a handy T-Rex?

What’s reallly egregious is the fact that the movies have really dispensed altogether with characters worthy of consideration. Dammit, Ian Malcolm used to be an interesting character — a sexy mathematician, for crying out loud. So was Sam Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant, a child-hating paleontologist obliged to save children from the park.

The Jurassic World movies dispense with character under the impression that actors Pratt and Dallas Howard are so likeable — and they are — that assigning them some kind of human personalities is unnecessary.

That attitude hurts the film. It lowers the stakes when it comes to caring about whether these people will come through the challenges put before them. It makes the difference between thriller and empty summer spectacle.

That said, it does make one reconsider one of the silly controversies of the first film, in which Howard supposedly insisted on wearing high heels throughout the movie, no matter how inconvenient. In retrospect, that now registers as a wise choice, a noble effort to suggest a character quirk to compensate for a dearth of personality on the part of the screenwriters.

Respect, BDH.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing