![]() Isabella Sermon plays the young Maisie, Lockwood’s granddaughter. Ted Levine is a ruthless mercenary with a fetish for dinosaur teeth. Toby Jones is dastardly as a dinosaur auctioneer. Smith’s Franklin has a running joke about his aversion to T-rexs that is worth a few chuckles. The supporting cast is given a few moments to shine. Bayona has totally lost the “Jurassic” loving feeling, swapping that vibe for cheap haunted-house thrills and kills. Once confined inside the walls of that antiseptic castle with multiple levels and laboratories, the movie stops dead in its tracks. The action eventually shifts back to the Lockwood Estate, where Eli plans to sell the dinosaurs to the highest bidders. The script doesn’t give him much to work with. Pratt’s roguish charm is practically neutered. The rest of the way is missteps, contrivances and overall ridiculousness. An image of the gentle-giant Apatosaurus burning up in a cloud of smoke and lava is effectively sad and powerful. Eleven-year-old boys will lose their minds. Admittedly, a few of the kill shots, both beast and human, are pretty epic. What ensues is little more than a retread of all that came before: Last-second escapes from the clutches of a raptor’s mouth, dino-on-dino battles, children in peril, double crosses, scientific mumbo-jumbo, slimey dinosaur fluids, and all the paleo-pandemonium one can stomach. But time is ticking because the island is about to blow. ![]() The script - which is incredibly heavy on exposition - sends Claire, Owen and two franchise newcomers, Paleo-veterinarian Zia (Daniella Pineda) and skittish systems analyst Franklin (Justice Smith), to the island to track and locate the dinosaurs, most importantly Blue, one of the trained raptors Owen raised. She’s summonsed to the creepy Lockwood Estate, where the smug Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), Lockwood’s crony, gives her piles of money to go save the dinosaurs and transport them to a sanctuary city, err, island. ![]() Meanwhile, John Lockwood (James Cromwell), who was John Hammond’s (the late Richard Attenborough) partner at InGen, the company from the Spielberg “Jurassic” flicks that initially cloned the dinosaurs, throws Claire a lifeline. Jeff Goldblum is testifying before Congress about animal rights, genetic power and “manmade cataclysmic change.” Dino-whisperer Owen (Chris Pratt) is out of the raptor-wrangling game, hundreds of miles away drinking beer, playing pool and building a log cabin. A volcano threatens to erupt, wiping out whatever is left on Isla Nublar, namely any of the dinosaurs that survived the events in “World.” Howard’s Claire runs the grassroots Dinosaur Protection Group. ![]()
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