Review: Chaos reigns in ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’

The enduring, collective love for “Jurassic Park” is immensely hard to explain. Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film implanted itself into our cultural consciousness as a kind of platonic ideal of a blockbuster. And it wasn’t just the 10-year-olds having a formative experience at the movie theater. Most everyone, it seems, including those who were adults at the time and those who wouldn’t be born for another decade or more, has a story about just how much that movie means to them. It doesn’t even matter how many times you watch it, or how much better special effects get: “Jurassic Park” never tarnishes, it just remains perfectly preserved in amber.

It’s hard to fault anyone for trying to recapture that magic — a filmmaker, a studio, or an audience looking for a fun time at the movies. Even Spielberg himself had trouble. But now, somehow, we’re six movies and three decades in and about as far as one could get from the spark that made that first one so special as we supposedly bid farewell to the “Jurassic World” era with “ Jurassic World: Dominion."

I can’t say I didn’t have some real fun with “Dominion.” There is an exceedingly well-done motorcycle chase through the streets of Taos, immense pleasure in watching Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum together again and the fun addition of a hotshot pilot played by DeWanda Wise. And there is wall-to-wall action that makes the almost two and a half hour runtime go by swiftly. But I also can’t say that I didn’t burst out laughing several times at parts that were not designed to be funny.

“Jurassic World: Dominion” is a chaotic mishmash on an epic scale and, believe it or not, the dinosaurs (who look great) are almost beside the point. After the events of “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” dinosaurs are just...around. There’s...