Rebirth is a direct sequel to Dominion, picking up with most of the dinosaurs having died off due to an inability to adapt to the modern world. It’s fun bad, not boring bad. It essentially shoves The Lost World: Jurassic Park (a second InGen facility on a different island where they were creating and experimenting with Dinosaurs),Jurassic Park 3 (a bickering family strays too far in their sailboat and wind up stranded on the island) and Jurassic World: Dominion together (Dinosaurs are being looked at for pharmaceutical applications). Much like Dominion, There isn’t much new in Rebirth. A good deal of the film is ‘member-berries/nostalgia bait.
The score by Alexandre Desplat is attempting to play upon or advance themes from the first Jurassic Park. Unfortunately, none of the new stuff is memorable or effective and the pieces borrowed from John Williams feel like soulless call backs. The screenplay by David Koepp is poor. It’s good to have the screenwriter of the first Jurassic Park back on board, but Koepp has clearly lost the shine over the years.
This flick’s got characters that add nothing to the film and only take up space (Here’s looking at you, David Iacono’s Xavier), warring plots (the stranded family tries to survive, a ragtag mercenary group attempts to collect samples from Dinosaurs for cures for diseases. These the two plots occasionally merge), and it’s overflowing with moments that make zero sense (like a Snickers bar wrapper, itself a call back to the first Jurassic Park, getting sucked into some ventilation and that’s all it takes for site b to go full meltdown mode with everyone evacuating in a panic). It doesn’t help matters that Koepp tries to insert modern, awkward humor into the proceedings with lackluster results. The cinematography by John Mathieson is very pretty. He manages to make all of the locations look good. The film as a whole is visually appealing.
I personally didn’t much care for our characters. They were kind of “just there” for me, with the exception of Jonathan Bailey’s Dr. Henry Loomis, who is the lead/star. Bailey is a nerdy, awkward, and attractive scientist who studied under Dr. Alan Grant. Loomis is the most different kind of leading man we’ve gotten in a big budget blockbuster geared towards mainstream audiences (I mean, the guy literally wants to be turned into a fossil after he dies).
The mutated dinosaurs are the only new thing Rebirth has to offer. They definitely make for better antagonists than giant genetically engineered locusts did. The designs for our dinos are freaky, and at times, scary. The CGI used is fine, but looks best when used for the environment and not the dinosaurs. These mutated Dino’s can’t beat regular dinosaurs, but they work very well within this film and are memorable enough. The Dino highlights are The Distortus Rex (Who only gets minimal screen time, but is easily the scariest Dino we’ve gotten in a Jurassic Park film since the first), the Mutadons (a cross between a Velociraptor and a Pteradon), and the return of the Spinosaurus. Unfortunately, no practical, physical or AA effects were used for the dinosaurs this time (There are some great deaths here, but that is still disappointing regardless).
Rebirth makes better use of its cast of dinosaurs than Dominion did (it also somehow does a better job at exploring a post-Dinosaur world than Dominion did). The action and dinosaur scenes are thrilling, fun, tense, scary, and effective. Ultimately, that’s all that really matters at the end of the day. Jurassic Park: Rebirth wants to be an evolution of the franchise, but fails at its goal. Luckily, it still manages to entertain and is a lot of dumb fun while it’s on. You could certainly do worse.
2.5 STARS
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