LAURIE AND DONNA GO BACK TO THE JURASSIC

This week Spacefrieghters crew members Laurie Green and Donna Frelick begin a new occasional series, reviewing the latest SF films in their best Siskel and Ebert style. First up: JURASSIC WORLD.

LAURIE SAYS:

Okay, everybody ready? A one and a two . . .

I enjoyed the latest edition of the Jurassic franchise for what it was meant to be--a fast-paced, action packed, gaspfest. With visually stunning sets, some cool new tech, and a few new beasties--including the seemingly unstoppable new designer monster, Indominus rex--it was quite a ride. If that's what you're looking for in your quest for summer Sci-Fi entertainment, it completely fills the bill.   

Set twenty-two years after the original Jurassic Park folded and on the same island--Isla Nublar, off the coast of Costa Rica--this reincarnation of the doomed predecessor has been successfully operating for a decade. (DUH da daaaa)

Though some of the plot ploys bordered on annihilating suspension of disbelief, *spoiler shield* (highlight the following space with your cursor to read) such as Velociraptors who could be clicker-trained or the extremely macho stunt of riding a motorcycle amidst a pack of hunting Raptors without a healthy barrier of steel between human handler and said predators, *lift shield* I still give it a "GO."

However...

If you're expecting a deep debate on genetic engineering or the cataclysmic failure surrounding the last attempt at a prehistoric zoo, you won't find it here. You also won't find any character development whatsoever, which only the first movie of the franchise attempted. What you will get is a lot of thrills, a few intriguing twists, a plethora of prehistoric eye candy, a not-so-well developed romantic side story, and the required Poor Little Cute Kid Factor thrown into the mix for sympathetic effect.

Chris Pratt certainly makes a charismatic though sometimes TMTL (Too Macho To Live) hero, though this viewer found his female romantic interest far less deserving of a happy ending. The villains (including one character who harks back to the original Jurassic Park) were utterly two-dimensional and mustache-twirling.

All-in-all, Jurassic World is worth the price of a ticket if you're on the hunt for a fun and flashy big budget film but not a deeply moving theater experience.

DONNA SAYS:
 

Well, I’ll agree with Laurie that JURASSIC WORLD was an entertaining way to spend a hot afternoon. I mean, what’s not to like about watching a T-Rex and an even bigger, toothier dino-creation called Indominus Rex duke it out in what’s left of the puny humans’ “amusement park”? Bring on the CGI and more popcorn!

Chris Pratt is well on his way to becoming the latest go-to guy in action heroes. The role of Owen, the park’s dino-wrangler and resident Voice of Doom (absorbing some of Jeff Goldblum’s purpose in the original JURASSIC PARK, but without the snarky humor), is a good fit for Pratt. He does well in all the physical stuff, looking heroic without looking like Dudley Doright. But I did miss the smart-alecky edge that made GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY so much fun. Owen is a very serious fellow. Especially when, as Goldblum’s character put it, all the “running and, um, screaming” starts, as it inevitably must when humans do stupid things.

And here is where I suppose I must part with Laurie. JW is nowhere near the thrill ride JURASSIC PARK was so many years ago, despite advances in film technology that should have made it more so. It is the same old story line recycled for the nth time: in our arrogance we overreach our ability to control the technology we create and it destroys us. That we’ve seen this same scenario of genetic manipulation and denial played out almost to the last detail before on this same damn island just seems a bit ridiculous. Did we learn nothing the last time, people?  But, okay, forget the story setup, did the film’s producers think no one had ever seen the first movie? Or the second? Or, God forbid, the third?

Now THAT'S a dinosaur . . . movie!

What made the first movie a classic was Stephen Spielberg as director. Spielberg is a master filmmaker, one who studied the art of creating suspense from another, earlier master, Alfred Hitchcock. He understood that it wasn’t the sight of a huge monster thrashing around that scared the bejesus out of you—it was the idea of that monster stalking you unseen in the dark. Think of the scariest moments of the original film—T-rex stomping closer and closer while the kids huddled, trapped in the car; the velociraptors hunting the hidden kids in the kitchen. Mostly we saw the kids’ terrified faces. The dinos were secondary. The same techniques were used to great effect in JAWS. We hardly saw the big fish until the final few minutes of the film (which was just as well, given the limitations of the shark model Spielberg was using).

All of that suspense is completely missing from JURASSIC WORLD. Director Colin Trevorrow, with only minor films to his credit, is clearly out of his league here. Both in terms of plot and technique, everything is out in the open, most of it in broad daylight. Is it fun to watch? Sure! Would I watch it again? Shrug. Much rather see the original again for the tenth time.

So, mission call? I’d say JURASSIC WORLD is a GO, but don’t expect much beyond some mindless summer fun.

(Watch this space for more GO-NO GO reviews of this summer’s hottest SF blockbusters from Laurie and Donna! Next up: TERMINATOR: GENESIS)

Cheers, Donna and Laurie

 

THE MOVIES LOSE THEIR BIGGEST FAN AS EBERT PASSES

Roger Ebert had my dream job.  Sit in a darkened movie theater all day long, well fortified with popcorn and soda.  Watch the magic on the flickering screen.  Go home and write about it.  Most importantly, get paid.

After more than forty-five years at it, Ebert was so good at this supposedly easy job that he had become an icon, one of the last of a generation of film critics that grew up in newspapers and magazines and really knew movies—their history, their relationship to American culture, their soaring triumphs and their crashing stupidities.  Ebert’s opinions had continued to wield influence despite the loss of his voice (and his ability to eat or drink) after cancer and complications from various surgeries took part of his neck and jaw in 2006.  But a resurgence of the cancer in recent weeks finally silenced the amiable critic.  Roger Ebert died Thursday at the age of 70.

Ebert had snagged this cushy gig as a mere youngster back in 1967, still in graduate school at the University of Chicago.  He started at the Chicago Sun-Times as a part-timer in 1966 and got the movie reviewing job a year later.  His good-natured rivalry with the reviewer at the other Chicago newspaper, Gene Siskel at the Tribune, led to a television show at the local PBS affiliate, SNEAK PREVIEWS (nationally broadcast on PBS by 1978).  The bickering critics often disagreed over films, but when they both gave a movie the “thumbs up”, you could be sure it was worth seeing.

When Siskel died in 1999, Ebert (who was a Gemini) continued his twin-reviewers formula with fellow Sun-Times writer Richard Roeper on AT THE MOVIES (in several incarnations).  Roeper has also been a frequent contributor on Ebert’s website rogerebert.com.

Starting at the very beginning of his career with a book on the history of his alma mater, the University of Illinois, Ebert was a prolific author on a variety of subjects (rice cooking?) right up until 2011, when he published his memoirs in Life Itself: a Memoir.  In 1975, he was the first journalist ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Ebert may have been “without question the nation’s most prominent and influential film critic", as Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times put it, but that’s not why most of his readers followed him.  It is certainly not why I clicked on his website to decide between GANGSTER SQUAD or BROKEN CITY on any given day or whether SNITCH was worth my time at all.  I loved Roger Ebert because he loved movies, not just films.  He always said beneath it all he was "just a fan."  

Ebert wasn’t a snob.  Some things he hated (teen slasher movies, for example, and I’m with him on that one).  His favorite films were of the old classic school—LA DOLCE VITA, CITIZEN KANE.  But he was an equal-opportunity reviewer.  He watched everything and gave everything a chance.  He could surprise you by liking something snootier critics wouldn’t deign to review.  Maybe he came by that broader outlook in his youth, when he spent time writing for science fiction fanzines.  

I think the real secret to his success was that he always took the movie’s audience into consideration. His reviews were relative, not absolute.  You can’t really compare 400 BLOWS with COWBOYS AND ALIENS.  They are apples and oranges, each tasty in its own way.  You can have good oranges and sour ones.  Nice, tart pippins and rotten, nasty mushballs.  But not fair to try and sell an orange to someone who likes apples.

He explained it this way, “When you ask a friend if HELLBOY is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to MYSTIC RIVER, you're asking if it's any good compared to THE PUNISHER. And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if SUPERMAN is four, then HELLBOY is three and THE PUNISHER is two. In the same way, if AMERICAN BEAUTY gets four stars, then THE UNITED STATES OF LELAND clocks in at about two.” 

I’ll miss Roger Ebert for another reason.  In this age of ubiquitous "expertise", he knew what he was talking about.  He was a true expert in his subject.  Today, anyone can offer up an opinion on a movie.  (I oughta know—I do it often enough!) Teenagers whose movie memories extend to maybe 2005 are encouraged to review whatever they just saw on the screen on Twitter and Facebook, in blogs and on Amazon.  Most of them have no context for what they see—no history, little knowledge outside the narrow genres or subgenres they like.  Some of them have so little respect for the medium they have to be scolded to turn off their phones in the theater and refuse to believe watching a pirated movie is stealing. Forgive me if I choose to discount their opinions, as loud and numerous as they are.

There are still a few old-school film critics out there.  I suppose as long as newspapers and magazines continue to survive (which may not be long), these lonely folk will continue to sit in the dark and watch the flickering screen, then go home to write about the magic they’ve seen.  And get paid. 

Though none will do it with as much wit, grace and warmth as Roger Ebert.

And in other movie news . . .

T-Rex in 3D?  Oooh, aaaah ...EEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

This weekend marks the return to theaters of Stephen Spielberg’s phenomenal JURASSIC PARK, this time in 3D!  Of all the films to be re-envisioned in 3D, this is one that may actually be worth the hype—and the price.  If you can tolerate the technology physically, I highly recommend making an afternoon of this film, which has never been the same on the small screen.  Who doesn’t love those wide shots of the Hawaiian coast?  The peaceful herds of dinosaurs grazing?  Sam Neill?  The plausible science (being played out as we speak!  I mean, didn’t any real scientists watch this movie????).  

As Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm says, “Oh, yeah.  ‘Oooh, ahhh’, that’s how it always starts.  Then later there’s the running and screaming.”  Which, if anyone’s still asking, is my favorite line of his.

Information for this article provided by Wikipedia and "Beloved critic Ebert dies at 70," by Caryn Rousseau, Associated Press, April 5, 2013.

Cheers

Donna