Boy howdy. This movie.

I like dinosaurs. A lot. Jurassic Park is probably my favorite movie of all time. So whenever a movie that focuses on dinosaurs comes around, I'll give it a look. I was stocked that the Jurassic franchise was coming back in 2015, and I went on my first date with my girlfriend to see it. So while it wasn't the best movie of all time, it holds a special place in my heart.

That being said, this movie kinda sucks. I managed to find a copy online to check it out, because I was worried about the quality and I don't have money to spend willy nilly, so I figured if I liked what I saw I'd just pay money to see it in a theater later. However, after watching it I can say that unless my girlfriend really wants to see this movie, I don't think I'll fork over the cash to watch it in a theater.

There are good bits to this movie, so I'll start there.

• The dinosaurs look fucking fantastic. Even though I was watching a shitty cam of the movie, I could see the quality, time, and love that went into each creature in this movie and the CGI meshed nearly perfectly with the animatronics that at times it was difficult to tell when one ended and the other began. They are the best they've ever looked.

• The Indoraptor, despite it's stupid name, is fucking cool. It was intimidating and scary, with a solid visual design. It stalked through the third act of the movie with malice and menace.

• Christ Pratt Christ Pratt's his way through this movie. Tons of charm as usual, though even he can't save this train wreck.

• There were a few beautiful shots and fun set pieces, with one shot in particular actually making me a little emotional. You'll know it when you see it.

• Several fun homages to the first film. Nothing special, but the way some parts were shot and framed had me going, "Oh, it was just like that in the first one!"

Now on to the bad:

• This movie has no sense of what it wants to be. Each of the three acts seem to come from entirely different movie ideas. It goes from serious to lighthearted to shockingly dark at the drop of a hat, and there's no real sense of coherence to the plot.

• The villains are cartoon characters and weak and pointless at best, and literally the stupidest mother fuckers on the planet at the worst. You'll know who I'm talking about when you see it.

• The side characters are all pointless and serve more as diversity ticks on some corporate stooges "Focus Group" checklist than as actual characters. Are you ready to see the same "Not Richard Ayoade from the IT crowd" black nerd "hack the mainframe" bit you've seen a hundred times before? How about "tough opinionated alt-chick"? who doesn't take shit and is totally capable? The actors are fine for their parts and I mean no disrespect to them, but their characters feel like such cookie-cutter "side characters" that I just finished the movie and have already forgotten their names.

• Speaking of side characters, the little girl in this movie is actually fine. She's a good actress and much less annoying than the kids in the last movie (and most of the kids in Jurassic Park movies for that matter), but they do something with her that is so baffling and out of nowhere that it just screams, "WE WANTED A TWIST BECAUSE THE KIDS LOVE TWISTS". It has no bearing on the plot at all aside from "justifying" a characters horrible and frankly nearly psychotic decision towards the end of the movie. Again, the young actress does a great job with what little she was given and I feel given a better script she can definitely shine.

Honestly, there's a ton of other little things I could nitpick at this movie for, but those above are definitely the biggest flaws I feel this movie has. You can tell that there as a solid idea behind this movie, but that idea got buried under a mountain of other ideas that were all meshed together into a weird goulash of a movie. This things reeks of "directed by comity".

Overall, there are so many eye-rolling moments in this film, coupled with a weak plot, dialogue, and side characters that even the always charming Chris Pratt and some killer dinosaur effects can't save it.

5/10. If you like dinosaurs and wanna see the best ones you're likely to get for a while, feel free to check your brain out at the door and enjoy at a matinee. Otherwise, don't expect to enjoy this movie if you're hoping for something more than Transformers without the sexism, racism, and dinosaurs instead of robots.

If ya'll have any questions, ask away. I'll try to avoid overt spoilers though, so I'll do my best to answer as vaguely as possible.

So I picked up Jurassic World: Evolution recently because I loved Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis as a kid and have a "dinosaur park sim"-shaped hole in my heart. I'm enjoying it for what it's worth. I think 60 bucks is a little steep for what it's offering, so I can't recommend you pick it up right now unless you REALLY want a Jurassic Park sim game with potential for future growth.

Anyways, that being said, I am 99% convinced this game is just a reskin of the old one. Everything from the dinosaur animations, to the mission types, to the vehicle controls, to how the general flow of gameplay goes feels almost identical to Operation Genesis. I get that there's only so much you can do when you're making what is essentially the same game with from the same property, but take this from a man who put an ungodly amount of time into OG as a child: it feels 100% the same. Like I think all they did was take OG and give the dinosaurs a very nice new paint job and then give everything else a half-hearted coat of paint.

I don't mind all that much since I can't play OG anymore, but I still found it odd how shockingly similar this games feels to OG. Anyone else notice this? Or am I just crazy/supplanting my memories of the old game onto the new one?