The seventh film in the Jurassic Park franchise may be a boring and dispiriting slog, but it has a surprisingly coherent premise. It’s been 32 years since dinosaurs were brought back from extinction, and public interest in them has waned. Kids aren’t visiting dinosaur exhibits any more, palaeontologists are out of work, and the few dinos that remain are dying of diseases in a climate that doesn’t suit them.

 

The savvy pharmaceutical executive Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), however, believes that dinosaurs could still be put to use. He recruits Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), a gun for hire who does rough jobs for whoever pays well, to venture to an island near the equator, where a number of remaining dinosaurs have been dumped. Zora’s job — with the help of palaeontologist Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) — is to find the three biggest dinosaurs on the island and get a sample of their blood while they’re still alive. The hope is that the creatures’ DNA will unlock a cure for heart disease. Why these three dinosaur species in particular? They have huge hearts and live for a long time duh; it’s called science.

 

Soon enough, the journey to the island hits a snag when the expedition leader, Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), intercepts a mayday signal from a sailing boat that is sinking nearby. As luck would have it, the culprit is one of the very dinosaurs the team is seeking, a vast sea-dwelling leviathan with dreadful teeth and a lust for human flesh.

It would be eccentric to watch Jurassic World Rebirth expecting originality; it’s almost funny how predictable the beats of the story are. Minor characters are given just enough personality to register — then are fed, with grim inevitability, to the dinosaurs that wait behind every tree. As I watched these poor up-and-coming actors being gobbled and mauled, I found myself fantasising about another film, the dark side of this one’s moon, in which the assembled stars —Johansson, Ali, Friend and Bailey — are unceremoniously stomped on and the rest of the story is given over to the non-playable characters.

 

The screenplay was written by David Koepp, who co-wrote the 1993 Jurassic Park adaptation with Michael Crichton, and at points the characters act in ways they did in the original. When our righteous palaeontologist sees a dinosaur in the wild for the first time, for instance, he cries: “Ahhhh! It’s beautiful!” Later, the gang encounters a lovely herd of vegetarian dinos, and the pace of the film slows as the camera takes in their curved necks, their graceful tails, and the loving way they tend to one another.

 

The trouble is, the 1990s energy Rebirth is trying to channel feels fake. Bailey does a perfectly good job of pretending to be struck with awe by the sight of the dinosaurs, but he’s such a thinly drawn character you don’t care that he’s having an epiphany. If what you want is a 1990s blockbuster with 1990s energy, you’d be better off watching a 1990s blockbuster. The film also has a size issue. Bennett and Co. may be looking for the biggest dinosaurs on the planet, but even so, they are ridiculously, impossibly big.

The largest animal ever to have lived is the blue whale – larger even than a megalodon, the prehistoric shark. Yet these dinosaurs are thundering Godzillas that would make a blue whale look petite.

 

In the logic of the franchise, of course, this makes sense. To win back an audience, every film must deliver a bigger, badder foe. Seven films in, the dinosaur inflation has reached such a scale that the creatures feel silly and fantastical, not extinct animals brought back to life. And when the main characters escape them again and again, their good fortune begins to ring hollow.

 

Hardcore Jurassic Park fans may yet get something out of this film. It does tick some of the essential boxes: dinosaurs, dread, Jeeps. There are jokes that drew laughs from the audience (though many others were punished with silence). Friend has been underused by Hollywood for years, so it’s nice to find him here. Ali brings his usual laid-back warmth; Johansson makes an effort. But really, this is a disposable film that makes you feel stupider and sadder the longer it goes on; not the worst film ever made, but definitely one of the more demoralising ones.

 

5.5/10

Boluwatife Adesina
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Boluwatife Adesina is a media writer and the helmer of the Downtown Review page. He’s probably in a cinema near you.