Film Review - Jurassic World: Dominion (12A)

 Jurassic World? Not a fan. (Dr Ian Malcolm)

He said it, not me! Let me make this clear - while no JP sequel film has come within an argentinosaurus' length (longest ever dinosaur - google it) of the glorious original, there's never been one I disliked. Until now. True, Jurassic Park III fizzled into meh, and Jurassic World was fundamentally a bigger budget why-bother retread of Steven Spielberg's 1993 classic, but they still carried some proper entertainment value. Despite its many detractors I even enjoyed 2018's Fallen Kingdom - click on the link to see how much! Then along lumbered Jurassic Park: Dominion, a movie so tedious that it calls into doubt the wisdom of having revisited the franchise at all. How bad is it? Think of that enormous hill of fly-infested dinosaur dung in Jurassic Park, double it in size, and we've got ourselves a metaphor.

Too harsh, maybe, but we're still in 'two hours plus of my life that I'll never get back' territory. So, what makes this a test case in how (and possibly why) not to do a sequel? Let's start with the story... 

Fallen Kingdom ended with the intriguing prospect of dinosaurs having escaped into the world to wreak the kind of havoc about which Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm character had always warned. And then... it's all kind of normalised. By the start of Dominion, so a news montage informs us, dino activity is out there and already absorbed by society. So instead, the plot becomes one of black marketeers kidnapping raptor babies and cloned adopted children, and trans-global pursuit, and nefarious goings-on at dubious scientific research institutes. So while there are lots of dinosaurs around snapping at our leads, they're kind of sidelined plotwise in their own movie. Rather than roaming free - because that would, when you really think about it, be a tricky story to tell in any focused way - they end up rampaging around a human-built facility just like in Jurassic Park. It's a wee bit like there was no overall game-plan for the trilogy, and everyone was kind of winging it along with the pterodactyls, reliant on a locked-in fanbase. (Call it Star Wars Sequels Syndrome.)

All of this could have been salvaged with other merits, of which there are precious few. Three films into this franchise renewal and it hasn't made me care about the characters an iota. Sure, Chris Pratt is charismatic, but charisma dies in a vacuum, and here he's left gasping, his Owen Grady having been given nothing beyond a now stale raptor-wrangling schtick. Yet he gets off lightly compared to Bryce Dallas Howard's corporate-suit-turned-dinosaur-rights-activist Claire Dearing, whose behaviour in Dominion is every bit as daft as her three-movie character arc. What's the dumbest option in this scenario? Okay, let's go for THAT one. Then the story brings in the Jurassic Park old-guard. It's momentarily nice to see Laura Dern and Sam Neill reprise their roles, but so much more painful to realise how the screenplay is giving them bugger all to work with. The only person who squeezes any entertainment value from their role is Jeff Goldblum, because - well - his charisma has its own life-support, apparently. Much like life, JG will always find a way.

And what of the actual dinosaur action? Doesn't it carry the day? Two things here... Firstly, considering how wowed we all were by walking, stampeding, snacking brachiosauruses and T-rexes in 1993, it's surprising they don't seem to look much more convincing in 2022, thereby recapturing some of the original wonder. And secondly, it turns out that once dinosaurs trying to eat humans has lost its novelty, you need a thing called character development to provide dramatic tension. That and a bit of patience in the build-up. Dominion doesn't even have the latter, fudging the kinds of suspense sequence that Spielberg took in his stride, and that J. A. Bayona likewise managed to inject into Fallen Kingdom. Result - the music by always-impressive Michael Giacchino sounds like it's scoring a whole other film, i.e. an exciting one. Oh, and the action sequences look sloppy and unconvincing too. At its best this movie is a half-hearted Jurassic Park tribute act. 

Let's be fair - I watched this film off the back of Top Gun: Maverick, the ultimate nostalgia-flick-done-right and a tour de force of practical filmmaking, so anything less than totally immersive was going to be a comedown. And in the first full summer of theatrical releases since Covid shut down the world's cinemas I'm not going to begrudge any movie decent box office returns. (At time of writing Dominion has racked up $650 million globally and continues to climb, which while not the brontosaurus-sized profits of the other franchise entries, is still good news for your local multiplex and mine.) But considering how 2022 has proved that retreads of existing properties - Top Gun, The Batman - can still be fresh and innovative, it's just ironic that of them all, Jurassic World: Dominion feels most like a dinosaur. 

I didn't need it to be great. I just wanted it to be better.

Gut Reaction: Unmoved. Bored. Hoping that the franchise is now extinct.

Memorable Moment: The trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder was fun...

Ed's Verdict: 3/10. It takes one unwieldy, charmless rehash to make you love a cherished original just a little bit less, but that's what Dominion did for me. I take back the 'too harsh'. This really is - to quote Goldblum from Jurassic Park - 'one big pile of shit'.

Film Review - Little Women (U)

Make it short and spicy - and if the main character is a girl, make sure she's married by the end.

Little Women is as perennial an American story as A Christmas Carol is a British one. Louisa May Alcott's tale of sisterhood and hard-won maturity at the time of the Civil War has already been adapted multiple times for the big screen, most recently in a 1994 version starring Susan Sarandon and Winona Ryder. Quite what Greta Gerwig hoped to achieve in the wake of her Lady Bird success by writing and directing another one seemed unclear when it was first announced. But with a shrewd take on the source material and several of her Lady Bird actor-collaborators on board, it turns out she knew exactly what she was doing.

The movie, like the novel, tells of the March sisters, struggling through hard times in their Massachussets home, while their father is off serving with the Union army. Eldest daughter Jo (Saoirse Ronan) has writing aspirations and the least conventional attitude of the four. Meg (Emma Watson) is theatrical, but more traditionally romantic. Beth (Sharp Objects' Eliza Scanlon) is a quiet source of good deeds, while youngest sister Amy (Florence Pugh fresh from Midsommar) is a talented artist, but with her eyes fixed on the prize of a rich husband. The explosion into their lives of wealthy young extrovert Theodore 'Laurie' Laurence (Timothee Chalamet) causes all kinds of ripples, romantic and otherwise. But whether or not any of the girls' dreams can survive into adulthood proves a whole other matter.

The genius of Gerwig's approach to the March girls' story is to combine old with new. The film's look is all lavish, exquisite period detail (visually every scene is set on stun). However the film-maker's approach - in the editing, the use of camera and chiefly the narrative structure - is strikingly contemporary. The use of a dual time-line is a daring strategy, but one that proves integral to the ideas mined by the screenplay from this oft-told tale. Beginning with the fully-grown Jo's attempt to have a book published, this version immediately sets the sisters' faltering adult lives in contrast to the hopes of their girlhood. There's a lustrous glow to the family sequences that sets them in a realm of memory, while the 'now' scenes are shot in the darker hues of experience. It takes a bit of audience adjustment for sure, but (one edit aside that momentarily confused me) ultimately works to powerful dramatic effect.

Of the various paths that Gerwig could have taken through Alcott's vividly detailed novel, she chooses the March girls' search for personal fulfillment. Together they exist in a world bent on narrowing their opportunities as women. The path each one takes, it seems, leads inevitably to compromise. For role models they can draw on the calm strength of their mother Marmee (Laura Dern as warm and loving here as she's steely in Marriage Story) or the grim praticality of their Aunt March (Meryl Streep delivering trademark scene-stealing support). But easy solutions are in short supply. It's a factor that creates the film's dramatic core, drawing sympathy for all four protagonists, the spiky, tricky-to-like Amy included.

Of course it helps that the leads (along with every bit-part player) are so well-cast and directed with such sureness of touch. The result is instant sisterly rapport and sheer vibrancy, along with a naturalism - period dialogue notwithstanding - that's reminiscent of Gerwig's other work. Each of the girls is terrific here, with special mention for two. Ronan carries the narrative through-line while creating a fervently independent character in Jo. Pugh meanwhile proves just as empassioned in her own way, bringing dimension and relatability to that infernal Amy. This pair are among the greatest screen actors of their generation, so it's good that they're both matched in scenes by Chalomet; impressing earlier this year in Beautiful Boy, he now submits another star turn as the charismatic if feckless Laurie. You want dynamism in your Alcott? Put any combination of these three in proximity and just watch it happen.

Here is an adaptation equally concerned with the adults the girls turn into as with their teenage selves. And if the household scenes are often a giddy whirl, the more sober grown-up sequences allow time to reflect for characters and audience alike. It's the kind of audacious treatment you might have hoped for from Gerwig and she delivers right to the final act, where some narrative slight of hand that takes things to a whole new level of brilliance. Expect the world of novel in dazzling colour, along with a radical new twist. This is Little Women for a new generation - of Alcott fans for sure. Chiefly cine-literate ones.

Gut Reaction: A brief adjustment to the time-structure, then building enjoyment - to laughter, teary moments and multi-layered satisfaction at the ending.

Memorable Moment: Jo sums it all up to Marmee.

Ed's Verdict: 9/10. Clever screen writing, but never at the expense of faithfulness, depth or emotion. Little Women is a great cinema experience - and the more you think about it, the better it gets.