REVIEW: Jurassic World Dominion is Not Worth the Admission Ticket

Fans are welcomed back to the Jurassic franchise one last time in director, Colin Trevorrow’s new pic, Jurassic World Dominion. In Dominion, we find Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) on the hunt for their “daughter” Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) after she is taken by the bio-tech company, Biosyn. Along their journey the duo encounters Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) who are on a mission of their own, to stop Biosyn before they manage to end the human race for good. But, like past Jurassic movies, things are never as easy as they seem and the group must do everything in their power to stop Biosyn before they can stop them while also not be eaten by a dinosaur.

Instead of creating a well thought out story, that seamlessly connects the characters from Jurassic Park with the characters from Jurassic World in Dominion, writer and director Colin Trevorrow and co-writer, Emily Carmichael created a story that was choppy and incomplete. Instead of taking the time to flesh out characters and storylines, the film relied to heavily on nonsense and action sequences that felt overly ridiculous and rushed. Not only that, but a number of the characters could have been left out of the story all together and nothing would have changed. The dialogue was as simple as simple can get and contained a number of single lines between characters that never led to any real conversations. Relationships that could have been explored in more depth were shoved aside for meaningless moments that did nothing to drive the story along.

The other major problem was the lack of focus on the dinosaurs. For a movie supposedly about dinosaurs, it didn’t feel like a movie about dinosaurs at all. Instead, it felt like a romance movie set in a world with dinosaurs. Unlike the previous Jurassic movies, there were no jump in your seats moments or moments that took a brief moment to educate the audience about the dinosaurs that were appearing on screen. Instead, everything with the dinosaurs was extremely predictable because those exact moments had appeared in a previous film. You knew exactly when a dinosaur was going to appear and what was going to happen with said dinosaur when they did appear because it had already occurred.

With that being said, the best part of the movie was the return of the original Jurassic Park trio, Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). They were the only characters that had a storyline worth paying attention to, and their interactions never felt forced or stale. Specifically, Goldblum’s Malcolm was once again a stand out that had the best lines throughout the entire feature. His character provided really the only laughs in the movie.

Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard return as Owen Grady and Claire Dearing and, honestly, could have been left out of the feature. Their storyline was not interesting, they had too many action sequences that seemed to be inserted into the film for the sake of having an action sequence, and their chemistry felt a little too forced. DeWanda Wise and Mamoudou Athie made their first appearances in the Jurassic franchise as Kayla Watts and Ramsay Cole. Unfortunately, these two characters did not get the justice they deserved. Both characters at a base level are interesting characters that should have been major parts in the story, but instead they are placed on the back burner about halfway through the movie.

Jurassic World Dominion does one thing and one thing only, end the Jurassic franchise. The movie features too many call backs to the original Jurassic Park, a plethora of lovey-dovey moments, and not enough dinosaurs. I highly recommend waiting for this one to be released to streaming before checking it out. It’s not worth the price of admission, even with the return of the original three.

Grade: D+