Snack time: A T-Rex gets ready to chow down in ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’.
JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH *** (134 minutes) M
The marvellously rendered array of beasts – some new; some vintage – that populate Jurassic World Rebirth is the chief reason to check in with the latest dino romp.
More a stand-alone franchise extender than part of the arc shaped by the previous six films, the soiree sports an all-new human cast who run and scream and scheme in a reasonably diverting, wholly unnecessary add-on to the film series that, for better or worse, have made dinosaurs and giant critters regular parts of the multiplex movie menu.
With the world now largely bored with dinosaurs, corporate entrepreneur Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) recruits secret agent Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to lead a team of scientists and hunters to go to a remote island and collect samples of dino DNA. With this he plans to develop a lucrative range of wonder drugs that can cure cancer and so forth.
All up, JWR shapes up as a good, fun B-movie time killer – though the pacing in the first hour is somewhat sluggish, taking the team, along with a stricken family they collect along the way, far too long to reach the island where the main action occurs.
It feels like a 90-minute film crammed into two-and-a-bit hours, putting one in mind of the terrific Jurassic Park III and its lean 83-minute running time (sans credits).
While the VFX are very good – mandatory in a film of this stamp – the story, to be frank, isn’t much chop, pitted as it is with irritating little holes.
To wit: We get an ancient torch that still has a full battery; a rubber dinghy that is dinosaur-proof; and a kid who is able to operate a complicated security gate without instruction – among a host of other plausibility lapses.
Yet more annoying is all the touchy-feely, new-age eco-guff about, would you believe, dinosaur rights. This nonsense produces a laughable scene involving two amorous giant dinosaurs and a besotted scientist who begins caressing one of the lizard’s legs. It’s Bad Movie standard.
Adequately, if unexceptionally, directed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla; Rogue One: The Creator) and written by David Koepp (who co-wrote Jurassic Park with founding author Michael Crichton), the film stumbles with some off-key characterizations.
For instance, villainizing the corporate guy as a money-hungry brute is a lame cliche harking back to the money-grubbing lawyer from the first film. He wants to use the dino-DNA to save millions of lives. So what if the dude wants to turn a dollar?
Strangely, Scarlett Johansson seems miscast here, looking awkward and somehow out of place. It’s odd given how she fought for the role (Jennifer Lawrence turned it down) and did so well as an action hero in the Black Widow films. Go figure.
In a nutshell, a good slice of matinee escapism, though not as full-blooded or as thrilling as the preceding three Jurassic World pics, which were all terrific, especially Dominion.
RIVIERA REVENGE (N’avoue jamais) *** (94 minutes; subtitled) M
Of all the reasons we love the French, most prominent among them is their habit of slipping us lovely, warm little arthouse films during a blockbuster cluster.
A huge hit in France – a country that enviably reveres its home-grown cinema – Riviera Revenge is a sweet, heartfelt comedic squib telling of a late-life squabble between elderly couple Francois and Annie (Andre Dussollier & Sabine Azema).
Married for half a century and enjoying a very luxurious retirement, their lifestyle is upset when Francois discovers his wonderful wife had a fling during a rough patch with their friend Boris (Thierry Lhermitte) – 40 years earlier.
Annie brushes it off but Francois, a retired military man of high distinction, can’t.
With a delicate, feather-light direction from writer Ivan Calbérac, who phases nicely between comedy and drama, the film plays with the notion of whether old transgressions have expiration dates, of letting things go and whether passions of the past dim or strengthen with the passage of time.
The lead performances are colourful and heightened, the film a mature-aged delight for those hungry for a dab touch of counter-programming.