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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
If you didn’t want to inspire comparison, maybe you shouldn’t have made a sequel
Movie
Incredibles 2 *
Writer-director Brad Bird picks up right where he left off 14 years ago in terms of both narrative and theme. Narrative: the arrival of The Underminer to ruin the peace and happiness of the Parrs, a family of superheroes that has finally gained those things after years of unhealthy repression. Except not really: it turns out The Underminer just wants to rob a bank. And that brings us to theme: the real underminer, then as now, is us normies, the bean-counters who made superheroes illegal in the first place. Even the big-time villains are just bitter regular folks: in the first, you had Syndrome, a wannabe super who devoted his life to the notion of “If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em.” In the second, you have The Screenslaver, who hates supers because they make the rest of us passive and weak — damsels in distress awaiting salvation from our betters instead of taking matters into our own hands. It’s especially bad when we sit around on our lazy backsides and watch them on TV. Which, it turns out, is exactly the supers’ plan for gaining legitimacy: a change in public perception through good televised PR. The obvious counter to the Screenslaver’s argument is the notion of inspiration: that we can strength from the example of the Incredibles and become super in our own lives. Instead, Bird gives us a superhero movie that rebukes its audience for showing up to watch it. On top of that, it’s talky, chunky, and clunky, and relies heavily on the slapstick deployment of super-baby Jack-Jack’s rainbow of powers to distract from all that. Only the story of teen super Violet’s frustrated romantic yearnings achieves the blend of action, wit, and intelligence that the original so expertly managed.
Needless to say, most people, critics and civilians alike, disagreed with my negative take on Incredibles 2. Biggest opening of all time for an animated film, 94% fresh rating at RottenTomatoes.com, A+ Cinemascore — plus a few disappointed comments on the Reader’s website. Like this one:
“Let’s can all the pretentiousness and the complaining of people who just finished watching the first movie so they could either attend ‘knowingly’ or write a seeming authoritative review. Watch 2 in a row... you, there will be some sameness. Wait 14 years, hmmm.....maybe that’s enough time between takes to riff on the same themes.”
On the one hand, yeah…14 years does seem long enough to justify revisiting the themes of the original. On the other hand, it’s probably good to have something new to say, and it’s probably really good to say it well if you’re going to follow up such a fine original effort. Contra the commenter’s supposition, I didn’t just finish watching the first movie; it’s been years since I saw it. But it did what it set out to do so well, and it inspired enough conversations with my children, that no refresher was required to make a detailed and somewhat damning comparison to the sequel.
Movie
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
As if in imitation of the ruthless Mexican drug cartel its heroes go after, director Stefano Sollima’s sequel decapitates, disembowels, and castrates Denis Villeneuve’s beautiful, tough, and sad 2015 original. Head: what had been a smart take on the difficulty of doing right even when you’re righteous — particularly when it comes to drug wars — here becomes an action movie that merely uses the border as a setting, full of talking heads (televised and otherwise), coincidental meetings, and inexplicable motives. (Why exactly does the young feller from a loving home sign on with the murderous bad guys?) Guts: the stony-hearted operatives from the first go-round — Josh Brolin’s government heavy and Benicio Del Toro’s cartel agent — go weirdly, uncharacteristically soft. (The first film established what Del Toro’s character thinks of cartel kiddies.) Cojones: never mind having the courage of the first film’s convictions, how about just having the courage of your executions? There’s plenty of gore and sentiment to cover over the flaws, but nothing approaching the horror of the first film’s house with walls full of bodies, or the heartbreak of the heroine’s final confrontation.
Ditto Sicario: Day of the Soldado, reviewed this week. As an action movie set amid the horrific brutality of the Mexican cartels, it’s not terrible. As a followup to 2015’s Sicario, it’s a disaster, in part because it does violence to the original’s vision and characters. If you didn’t want to inspire comparison, maybe you shouldn’t have made a sequel.
Patrick Lyon, a cinephile I know who shared my disappointment with Incredibles 2 wrote to say that the film “left me considering again something I have held for a while, which is that a movie has to stand on its own merits. I have always hated the argument of “you need to see this [other] movie and read these books in order to really understand,” when it comes to a film. Some Star Wars films are particular offenders here. If a movie is a good movie, it does not require you to have seen and read a thousand other things. Great movies stand on their own.
Movie
Avengers: Infinity War **
There is much that needs forgiving in the Russo brothers’ gargantuan final chapter(?) of this particular book of the Marvel Superhero Chronicles, and not just easy stuff like the 160-minute runtime or the overabundance of overlong punch-ups (now with extra energy bolts!) No, there’s also the frequent and annoying matter of Variable Power, i.e. when your bad guy opens the film by beating The Hulk into unconsciousness, pretty much any punch he lands on anyone else from there on out should be lethal. But no, because punching is crucial. And when he possesses a gauntlet outfitted with a stone that lets him alter reality at will, he really shouldn’t have to do any more fighting. (Massive heart attacks all ‘round, and that’s that!) But no, because energy bolts are crucial. (Really, the most interesting conflict comes once our heroes go after his soul.) More seriously, there’s the more frequent problem of undermining dramatic moment after dramatic moment with a patented Marvel-brand quip or gag. Mighty blacksmith to Thor: “You’re about to take the full force of a star. It will kill you.” Thor: “Only if I die!” Smith: “Yes…that’s what ‘killing you’ means.” Hyuck! Let’s get on with the heroic self-sacrifice! But maybe the quips and the punch-ups are there because they have to be, what with the film’s steady parade of failure and even death, right from the outset. Plans fail. Character fails. (Alpha dog Tony Stark squares off with his spiritual bastards, Snarky Doc Strange and Cocky Star Lord, and can’t be super pleased with what he hath wrought. Small wonder the perpetually defeated Bruce Banner has trouble summoning his raging green alter ego, what with all of the other ego on display.) Sometimes, even sacrifices fail. It’s not exactly refreshing, but it is bracing, and even gratifying. And while we’ve heard this bad guy’s patter before — overpopulation is a problem, and what’s needed is someone with the power and will to do something about it — Josh Brolin manages to give Thanos’ evil plan a mad, sad air of nobility. So perhaps forgiveness is possible.
“However, that [notion] has recently been put to the test for me, particularly by the most recent Avengers movie. I thought it was particularly well executed, at least given the massive restraints and expectations it had.” [Pause for spoiler alert about Avengers: Infinity War.] Lyon writes that the big stunner at the end, “when the heroes are turning to dust, did not land with me. And it was precisely because of external factors. I knew that 90% of those characters would not stay dead, because they are tied in to other movies and franchises, and so their ‘deaths’ rang hollow.
“However, that sort of violates my rule that a movie should be judged on its own merits. Within the movie itself, it should be effective, and yet I didn’t find it effective, for external reasons. Quite frankly, I would have had a great deal of respect if that movie had been the end of the MCU. But it is not. I have been considering this more and more: Is the ‘stand alone’ philosophy a good principle, or should it be more nuanced than that?”
Lyon’s experience echoed my own. During that big scene in Avengers, my thoughts ran something like this: Oh my gosh. They just killed… Holy crow, him too? And her? And him? But they’ve already announced all those sequels. Was that all a ruse? Could they be that gutsy? The scene wasn’t even over, and I was wondering about Marvel’s marketing strategy. I could admire the movie’s ending, but those “external reasons” kept me from entering into it.
Movie
Monster Calls *
...because therapists don’t pay home visits. Liam Neeson gets transmogrified into a weirdly muscular tree-man summoned by the tortured psyche of young Conor O’Malley, who is plagued by nightmares about his dying mother. (As a withdrawn artist type, he’s also plagued by a nasty cardboard bully.) The monster promises to tell three stories in his quiet boom of a voice, after which, Conor must tell the truth about his nightmare. But while the stories are built from the stuff of fairy tales — queens, princes, healers, angry townspeople, etc. — they’re all twisted up into something more like highly personalized parables (and unhelpful ones at that). Conor needs the monster’s wisdom, in part because the real world is busy teaching him that “love isn’t enough; it doesn’t carry you through,” that there’s no point in apology or punishment after transgression, and that he should smash things if he feels the need. Director J.A. Bayona presents appealing worlds (real and imagined) awash in color and detail, but while his movie and its monster are very interested in exploring and explaining humanity, they don’t quite get people.
Happily, this sort of external conditioning isn’t always deleterious. I probably wouldn’t think as much as I do of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom if I hadn’t thought so little of both its predecessor Jurassic World and director J.A. Bayona’s previous feature, A Monster Calls. Starting with the latter: A Monster Calls deals with a little boy who is facing the loss of his sick mother, and who is visited by a monster who helps him to understand himself and his fear. Bayona weaves a remarkably similar storyline into a franchise film about dinosaurs, and even more remarkably, he makes it work to genuine emotional effect. The film asks the question, “Having created monsters, do we have the right — perhaps even the obligation — to destroy them?” And the little girl who spends so much of the film screaming, running, and hiding from the monsters in her house provides an answer.
Movie
Jurassic World *
Director Colin Trevorrow dumps out his Steven Spielberg Family Thriller Kit and makes sure all the pieces are there: squabbling siblings (young and old!), divorce, kids in peril, endearing childlike wonder vs. the threat posed by self-serving grownups, moral musings on science and nature, and oh yes, dinosaurs. Lots and lots of dinosaurs. But he doesn't seem to have read the assembly instructions, because the result simply doesn't fit together or perform as advertised. (Early warning sign: the swelling, triumphant music played over the big reveal of...a theme park. Later warning sign: the lengthy, faintly sadistic death scene of an extremely minor character. <em>Why?</em>) There is this bit of cleverness: a pointed indictment of the audience's constant, insatiable desire for "bigger teeth" — even as that's exactly what's served up. (The final showdown really is what you're paying for here.) Chris Pratt delivers his hambone dialogue with suitable Natural Man sincerity, and Bryce Dallas Howard's haircut is almost as precise and angular as her cheekbones. Question for discussion after the show: is the militaristic, gutty bad guy (a fantastic Vincent D'Onofrio) proved right in the end?
And the dinos are monsters, make no mistake. The biological definition of “monster” is “a grossly anomalous fetus or infant,” and the word is taken from the Latin monstrum, which may be translated “unnatural event.” Like Victor Frankenstein’s monster, these critters were cooked up in a lab, and the deviation from the natural order — expounded upon so delightfully by Jeff Goldblum at the film’s beginning and end — has very real, concrete consequences. (Short version: babies need a mother.)
Movie
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom **
Golly, maybe life really <em>will</em> find a way, even in a franchise whose last installment played like a zombified version of the original entry from Steven Spielberg. Director J.A. Bayona’s most recent feature was titled <em>A Monster Calls</em>, and featured a child dealing with painful news about his mother. Bayona weaves a remarkably similar storyline into a tentpole film about dinosaurs, and even more remarkably, he makes it work to genuine emotional effect. The film asks the question, “Having created monsters, do we have the right — perhaps even the obligation — to destroy them?” The answer comes from the little girl who spends so much of the film screaming, running, and hiding from the monsters in her house. And the dinos <em>are</em> monsters here, make no mistake. It’s not just the (admittedly absurd but still chillingly creepy) scene where the moppet cringes in bed while the bloodthirsty beastie crawls closer and closer. The biological definition of “monster” is “a grossly anomalous fetus or infant,” and the word is taken from the Latin <em>monstrum</em>, which may be translated “unnatural event.” Like Victor Frankenstein’s awful experiment, these critters were cooked up in a lab, and the deviation from the natural order — expounded upon so delightfully by Jeff Goldblum at the film’s beginning and end — has very real, concrete consequences. (Short version: babies need a mother, and monsters will take care of their own.) Some very fine visuals here — silhouettes and shadows — which unfortunately have to do battle with a very intrusive score.
Skipping back to the former: Fallen Kingdom does a much better job of catching the spirit of Spielberg’s original than Jurassic World, and it does so by giving us characters akin to Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond, the Man Who Resurrected Dinosaurs. Someone we’re inclined to like. Someone who wants to do something wonderful. But someone who, it turns out, has made a terrible mistake. The obvious candidate here is James Cromwell’s Benjamin Lockwood, who just wants to gather up the endangered dinos and give them sanctuary. But the film goes further, and puts some of the responsibility on our handsome leads, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. It’s a gutsy move, one that works as well as it does because we’ve spent a previous movie learning to like them. Fallen Kingdom isn’t a great movie, but then, it doesn’t have to stand on its own.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
If you didn’t want to inspire comparison, maybe you shouldn’t have made a sequel
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
If you didn’t want to inspire comparison, maybe you shouldn’t have made a sequel
Movie
Incredibles 2 *
Writer-director Brad Bird picks up right where he left off 14 years ago in terms of both narrative and theme. Narrative: the arrival of The Underminer to ruin the peace and happiness of the Parrs, a family of superheroes that has finally gained those things after years of unhealthy repression. Except not really: it turns out The Underminer just wants to rob a bank. And that brings us to theme: the real underminer, then as now, is us normies, the bean-counters who made superheroes illegal in the first place. Even the big-time villains are just bitter regular folks: in the first, you had Syndrome, a wannabe super who devoted his life to the notion of “If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em.” In the second, you have The Screenslaver, who hates supers because they make the rest of us passive and weak — damsels in distress awaiting salvation from our betters instead of taking matters into our own hands. It’s especially bad when we sit around on our lazy backsides and watch them on TV. Which, it turns out, is exactly the supers’ plan for gaining legitimacy: a change in public perception through good televised PR. The obvious counter to the Screenslaver’s argument is the notion of inspiration: that we can strength from the example of the Incredibles and become super in our own lives. Instead, Bird gives us a superhero movie that rebukes its audience for showing up to watch it. On top of that, it’s talky, chunky, and clunky, and relies heavily on the slapstick deployment of super-baby Jack-Jack’s rainbow of powers to distract from all that. Only the story of teen super Violet’s frustrated romantic yearnings achieves the blend of action, wit, and intelligence that the original so expertly managed.
Needless to say, most people, critics and civilians alike, disagreed with my negative take on Incredibles 2. Biggest opening of all time for an animated film, 94% fresh rating at RottenTomatoes.com, A+ Cinemascore — plus a few disappointed comments on the Reader’s website. Like this one:
“Let’s can all the pretentiousness and the complaining of people who just finished watching the first movie so they could either attend ‘knowingly’ or write a seeming authoritative review. Watch 2 in a row... you, there will be some sameness. Wait 14 years, hmmm.....maybe that’s enough time between takes to riff on the same themes.”
On the one hand, yeah…14 years does seem long enough to justify revisiting the themes of the original. On the other hand, it’s probably good to have something new to say, and it’s probably really good to say it well if you’re going to follow up such a fine original effort. Contra the commenter’s supposition, I didn’t just finish watching the first movie; it’s been years since I saw it. But it did what it set out to do so well, and it inspired enough conversations with my children, that no refresher was required to make a detailed and somewhat damning comparison to the sequel.
Movie
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
As if in imitation of the ruthless Mexican drug cartel its heroes go after, director Stefano Sollima’s sequel decapitates, disembowels, and castrates Denis Villeneuve’s beautiful, tough, and sad 2015 original. Head: what had been a smart take on the difficulty of doing right even when you’re righteous — particularly when it comes to drug wars — here becomes an action movie that merely uses the border as a setting, full of talking heads (televised and otherwise), coincidental meetings, and inexplicable motives. (Why exactly does the young feller from a loving home sign on with the murderous bad guys?) Guts: the stony-hearted operatives from the first go-round — Josh Brolin’s government heavy and Benicio Del Toro’s cartel agent — go weirdly, uncharacteristically soft. (The first film established what Del Toro’s character thinks of cartel kiddies.) Cojones: never mind having the courage of the first film’s convictions, how about just having the courage of your executions? There’s plenty of gore and sentiment to cover over the flaws, but nothing approaching the horror of the first film’s house with walls full of bodies, or the heartbreak of the heroine’s final confrontation.
Ditto Sicario: Day of the Soldado, reviewed this week. As an action movie set amid the horrific brutality of the Mexican cartels, it’s not terrible. As a followup to 2015’s Sicario, it’s a disaster, in part because it does violence to the original’s vision and characters. If you didn’t want to inspire comparison, maybe you shouldn’t have made a sequel.
Patrick Lyon, a cinephile I know who shared my disappointment with Incredibles 2 wrote to say that the film “left me considering again something I have held for a while, which is that a movie has to stand on its own merits. I have always hated the argument of “you need to see this [other] movie and read these books in order to really understand,” when it comes to a film. Some Star Wars films are particular offenders here. If a movie is a good movie, it does not require you to have seen and read a thousand other things. Great movies stand on their own.
Movie
Avengers: Infinity War **
There is much that needs forgiving in the Russo brothers’ gargantuan final chapter(?) of this particular book of the Marvel Superhero Chronicles, and not just easy stuff like the 160-minute runtime or the overabundance of overlong punch-ups (now with extra energy bolts!) No, there’s also the frequent and annoying matter of Variable Power, i.e. when your bad guy opens the film by beating The Hulk into unconsciousness, pretty much any punch he lands on anyone else from there on out should be lethal. But no, because punching is crucial. And when he possesses a gauntlet outfitted with a stone that lets him alter reality at will, he really shouldn’t have to do any more fighting. (Massive heart attacks all ‘round, and that’s that!) But no, because energy bolts are crucial. (Really, the most interesting conflict comes once our heroes go after his soul.) More seriously, there’s the more frequent problem of undermining dramatic moment after dramatic moment with a patented Marvel-brand quip or gag. Mighty blacksmith to Thor: “You’re about to take the full force of a star. It will kill you.” Thor: “Only if I die!” Smith: “Yes…that’s what ‘killing you’ means.” Hyuck! Let’s get on with the heroic self-sacrifice! But maybe the quips and the punch-ups are there because they have to be, what with the film’s steady parade of failure and even death, right from the outset. Plans fail. Character fails. (Alpha dog Tony Stark squares off with his spiritual bastards, Snarky Doc Strange and Cocky Star Lord, and can’t be super pleased with what he hath wrought. Small wonder the perpetually defeated Bruce Banner has trouble summoning his raging green alter ego, what with all of the other ego on display.) Sometimes, even sacrifices fail. It’s not exactly refreshing, but it is bracing, and even gratifying. And while we’ve heard this bad guy’s patter before — overpopulation is a problem, and what’s needed is someone with the power and will to do something about it — Josh Brolin manages to give Thanos’ evil plan a mad, sad air of nobility. So perhaps forgiveness is possible.
“However, that [notion] has recently been put to the test for me, particularly by the most recent Avengers movie. I thought it was particularly well executed, at least given the massive restraints and expectations it had.” [Pause for spoiler alert about Avengers: Infinity War.] Lyon writes that the big stunner at the end, “when the heroes are turning to dust, did not land with me. And it was precisely because of external factors. I knew that 90% of those characters would not stay dead, because they are tied in to other movies and franchises, and so their ‘deaths’ rang hollow.
“However, that sort of violates my rule that a movie should be judged on its own merits. Within the movie itself, it should be effective, and yet I didn’t find it effective, for external reasons. Quite frankly, I would have had a great deal of respect if that movie had been the end of the MCU. But it is not. I have been considering this more and more: Is the ‘stand alone’ philosophy a good principle, or should it be more nuanced than that?”
Lyon’s experience echoed my own. During that big scene in Avengers, my thoughts ran something like this: Oh my gosh. They just killed… Holy crow, him too? And her? And him? But they’ve already announced all those sequels. Was that all a ruse? Could they be that gutsy? The scene wasn’t even over, and I was wondering about Marvel’s marketing strategy. I could admire the movie’s ending, but those “external reasons” kept me from entering into it.
Movie
Monster Calls *
...because therapists don’t pay home visits. Liam Neeson gets transmogrified into a weirdly muscular tree-man summoned by the tortured psyche of young Conor O’Malley, who is plagued by nightmares about his dying mother. (As a withdrawn artist type, he’s also plagued by a nasty cardboard bully.) The monster promises to tell three stories in his quiet boom of a voice, after which, Conor must tell the truth about his nightmare. But while the stories are built from the stuff of fairy tales — queens, princes, healers, angry townspeople, etc. — they’re all twisted up into something more like highly personalized parables (and unhelpful ones at that). Conor needs the monster’s wisdom, in part because the real world is busy teaching him that “love isn’t enough; it doesn’t carry you through,” that there’s no point in apology or punishment after transgression, and that he should smash things if he feels the need. Director J.A. Bayona presents appealing worlds (real and imagined) awash in color and detail, but while his movie and its monster are very interested in exploring and explaining humanity, they don’t quite get people.
Happily, this sort of external conditioning isn’t always deleterious. I probably wouldn’t think as much as I do of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom if I hadn’t thought so little of both its predecessor Jurassic World and director J.A. Bayona’s previous feature, A Monster Calls. Starting with the latter: A Monster Calls deals with a little boy who is facing the loss of his sick mother, and who is visited by a monster who helps him to understand himself and his fear. Bayona weaves a remarkably similar storyline into a franchise film about dinosaurs, and even more remarkably, he makes it work to genuine emotional effect. The film asks the question, “Having created monsters, do we have the right — perhaps even the obligation — to destroy them?” And the little girl who spends so much of the film screaming, running, and hiding from the monsters in her house provides an answer.
Movie
Jurassic World *
Director Colin Trevorrow dumps out his Steven Spielberg Family Thriller Kit and makes sure all the pieces are there: squabbling siblings (young and old!), divorce, kids in peril, endearing childlike wonder vs. the threat posed by self-serving grownups, moral musings on science and nature, and oh yes, dinosaurs. Lots and lots of dinosaurs. But he doesn't seem to have read the assembly instructions, because the result simply doesn't fit together or perform as advertised. (Early warning sign: the swelling, triumphant music played over the big reveal of...a theme park. Later warning sign: the lengthy, faintly sadistic death scene of an extremely minor character. <em>Why?</em>) There is this bit of cleverness: a pointed indictment of the audience's constant, insatiable desire for "bigger teeth" — even as that's exactly what's served up. (The final showdown really is what you're paying for here.) Chris Pratt delivers his hambone dialogue with suitable Natural Man sincerity, and Bryce Dallas Howard's haircut is almost as precise and angular as her cheekbones. Question for discussion after the show: is the militaristic, gutty bad guy (a fantastic Vincent D'Onofrio) proved right in the end?
And the dinos are monsters, make no mistake. The biological definition of “monster” is “a grossly anomalous fetus or infant,” and the word is taken from the Latin monstrum, which may be translated “unnatural event.” Like Victor Frankenstein’s monster, these critters were cooked up in a lab, and the deviation from the natural order — expounded upon so delightfully by Jeff Goldblum at the film’s beginning and end — has very real, concrete consequences. (Short version: babies need a mother.)
Movie
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom **
Golly, maybe life really <em>will</em> find a way, even in a franchise whose last installment played like a zombified version of the original entry from Steven Spielberg. Director J.A. Bayona’s most recent feature was titled <em>A Monster Calls</em>, and featured a child dealing with painful news about his mother. Bayona weaves a remarkably similar storyline into a tentpole film about dinosaurs, and even more remarkably, he makes it work to genuine emotional effect. The film asks the question, “Having created monsters, do we have the right — perhaps even the obligation — to destroy them?” The answer comes from the little girl who spends so much of the film screaming, running, and hiding from the monsters in her house. And the dinos <em>are</em> monsters here, make no mistake. It’s not just the (admittedly absurd but still chillingly creepy) scene where the moppet cringes in bed while the bloodthirsty beastie crawls closer and closer. The biological definition of “monster” is “a grossly anomalous fetus or infant,” and the word is taken from the Latin <em>monstrum</em>, which may be translated “unnatural event.” Like Victor Frankenstein’s awful experiment, these critters were cooked up in a lab, and the deviation from the natural order — expounded upon so delightfully by Jeff Goldblum at the film’s beginning and end — has very real, concrete consequences. (Short version: babies need a mother, and monsters will take care of their own.) Some very fine visuals here — silhouettes and shadows — which unfortunately have to do battle with a very intrusive score.
Skipping back to the former: Fallen Kingdom does a much better job of catching the spirit of Spielberg’s original than Jurassic World, and it does so by giving us characters akin to Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond, the Man Who Resurrected Dinosaurs. Someone we’re inclined to like. Someone who wants to do something wonderful. But someone who, it turns out, has made a terrible mistake. The obvious candidate here is James Cromwell’s Benjamin Lockwood, who just wants to gather up the endangered dinos and give them sanctuary. But the film goes further, and puts some of the responsibility on our handsome leads, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. It’s a gutsy move, one that works as well as it does because we’ve spent a previous movie learning to like them. Fallen Kingdom isn’t a great movie, but then, it doesn’t have to stand on its own.
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