Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

"Owen" (Chris Pratt) and "Claire" (Bryce Dallas Howard) are living in the remote wilderness with "Maisie" (Isabella Sermon), whom they are desperate to protect. From what? Well it turns out she is a bit of a miraculous conception from the "Lockwood" dynasty that co-founded the original park with "Hammond" and is very much on the radar of corporate megalomanic "Dodgson" (Campbell Scott) whose company is devising super-engineered locusts to devour great swathes of crops across the United States that are not grown from their own brand of seed. This is where "Sattler" (Laura Dern) comes in. She is convinced of this dastardly plan, but must compare the DNA of one from his lab with one they secured in the wild so she can prove it. Her plan enlists the help of old pal "Grant" (Sam Neill) and with the help of their intellectual nemesis "Malcolm" (a suitably contrarian effort from Jeff Goldblum) they secure an invitation to the company's sanctuary in the Italian Dolomites. Meantime, the young girl is abducted from her wintry home, as is the baby of velociraptor "Blue" and so Pratt and Howard have to track them down, and that takes them on some quickly paced, but hardly original, set piece adventures where they meet pilot "Kayla" (DeWanda Wise). She chips in to help them in what now reminded me of aspects of the Brendan Fraser "Mummy" films, before they also end up in the Italian mountains. Can they team up and thwart the cunning plan? The problem with this, is that there are just way too many characters and too many weakly constructed threads to the story going on. It's all too diffuse and serendipity in the last hour or so just takes far too great a hand in the way the narrative combines and develops. The dinosaur effects are still amazing, but oddly enough I felt them less effective than in previous iterations - there just aren't enough scenes that feature them and when they do, they are just under-used. Pratt is always good value for me, but here he looks out of sorts and hardly features at all; Scott just doesn't cut it as the malevolent baddie (though could his character be the same guy who tried to buy the specimens in the first film?) and Sam Neill relies too much on his bemused facial expressions - indeed his best work on this is pretty much all included in the trailers. It looks great on big screen, includes a few bars now and again from John Williams masterful 1993 score, but for the main part this is a pretty mediocre conclusion to a great franchise with an ending that is rushed and entirely predictable.