Jurassic World Dominion is the latest in the Jurassic Park franchise and stars Richie Cunningham's daughter, Peter Quill, Jeff Goldblum and some guy I don't recognize in the role of Tim Cook. Sam Neil is back doing his doughy Indiana Jones thing along with Laura Dern wearing the same pants she did in the first movie.
In the very near future dinosaurs roam freely among the earth's inhabitants: humans, lions, cute little puppies and those things you see at Starbucks with the green hair and nose rings.
The plot unfurls as Tim Cook has decided that exploiting children and slave labor isn't nearly evil enough so he decides to create giant, mutant locusts that eat everything except crops planted from Apple(R) brand seeds. Naturally things go awry and the locusts go out of control and start eating everything except sandwiches from Panera because even giant, mutant locusts have limits.
Tim Cook's evil lair is in some remote tropical rain forest in Antarctica. Seriously, somehow there's snow and a frozen lake at the entrance to this place but the surrounding area is full of lush vegetation. For some reason. Also, for some reason there are lots of dinosaurs in this place. There is also a hyperloop but absolutely no mention of Elon Musk. Curiously this hyperloop can disobey the laws of physics and works without a vacuum in the tunnel.
I will be using the phrase "for some reason" a lot in this review because, for some reason, things just kind of happen without any rational explanation.
Meanwhile Starlord and Ms. Nepotism are trying to hide the world's only human clone from bad guys but she's a teenager and so she has a teen moment and runs off only to be immediately caught by the bad guys who just happen to be waiting on a bridge for her... for some reason.
For some reason Punxsutawney Jones and cargo pants decide they need to crash Tim Cook's secret lab and get DNA samples from the giant locusts even though there are millions of the locusts everywhere and they could simply get a sample from one that's eating french fries in a McDonald's parking lot.
Some other completely unrelated shit happens for some reason. I don't know. Probably just to increase the run time. Lots of CGI dinosaurs chasing stunt doubles, stuff like that.
The Guardians go to the Antarctican Rain Forest to rescue clone-girl but the plane gets attacked by Mrs. Pteranodon and crashes. Bryce Howard Cunningham ejects and lands in the rain forest. As she begins her trek to the central complex she naturally runs into a dinosaur: the dreaded Freddy Kruegersaur. She outwits Freddy by crawling across the sound stage... err forest floor and into a curiously clean pool of water. She waits until the last possible second to get her hair wet.
Meanwhile Peter and Yondu miraculously survive crashing into the frozen lake. The ice is thin and cracks whenever they try to walk on it. Naturally they also run into a dinosaur. This dinosaur can run, swim, ice skate and do parkour but somehow they manage to escape by casually jogging across the frozen lake which has mysteriously stopped cracking.
At this point the movie devolves into a challenge to see how many tired Hollywood tropes can be crammed into the remaining runtime. Curiously the dinosaurs are incredibly inept. Even when surrounded and the situation looks impossibly dire the protagonists can seemingly escape by simply moving around a little. The dinosaurs are also easily distracted by things like flares, jingling car keys and people going "hey, look over there".
Of course Tim Cook gets his comeuppance. Buddy, Tiny and Shiny attack him in the hyperloop and then teabag him for good measure.
In the final act the dinosaurs have all congregated at the complex's food court for some reason. The good guys must traverse the perilous mixture of dinosaurs and discarded Pinkberry to reach a helicopter to escape. They move around a little and make it to the helicopter.
The finale is a fight between T-Rex and Godzilla. Godzilla is winning but then Freddy Kruegersaur and T-Rex tag team Godzilla and kill him by giving him a pile driver and then hitting him with a chair.
In a very hasty wrap-up the Earth is saved, everyone is happy, man lives in harmony with the dinosaurs and the cast cashes a bunch of fat checks.
All-in-all Jurassic Park Dominion is another Hollywood masterpiece with brilliant writing, impeccable direction and fabulous acting... if your yardstick is Molly Shannon's "Superstar".
