The original prehistoric monster movie gets a turbo-charged makeover with Chris Pratt in charge of the action
The original prehistoric monster movie gets a turbo-charged makeover with Chris Pratt in charge of the action.
Two decades after Steven Spielberg's monster hit Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs are on the rampage again. The ill-fated luxury resort dreamed up by Richard Attenborough's billionaire showman in the original 1993 film is now, it appears, successfully up and running, allowing visitors to gawp and goggle at real prehistoric creatures in the flesh.
The park's bosses - not unlike the makers of blockbuster films - need to come up with bigger, scarier beasts every year to keep the punters coming back. Unfortunately, all hell breaks loose when the genetically modified dinosaur the park's scientists have cooked up in the lab, the fearsome Indominus rex, escapes and runs amok.
New director Colin Trevorrow, handpicked for the job of helming this sequel-cum-reboot by Spielberg himself, ensures the ensuing adventure delivers the thrills and spills we have come to expect from the series - quite an accomplishment given that his only previous feature film was the quirky low-budget sci-fi comedy Safety Not Guaranteed.
It is the film's leading duo, however, who really make things swing. Pratt's military vet-turned-dinosaur wrangler Owen, a rugged old-school hero cut from the Indiana Jones mould, proves equally handy with a quip, a firearm and a vintage motorcycle, while Bryce Dallas Howard's Claire, the theme park's tightly wound operations manager, pulls off her less instantly amenable character. Which is probably an even more impressive feat given that she has to sprint away from a rapacious dinosaur in high heels.
Look out, too, for the in-jokey nods to previous Spielberg films - the Jaws reference will make you gulp.
