“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” is the 5th installment in the “Jurassic Park” franchise, is directed by J.A. Bayona and stars Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, B.D. Wong, James Cromwell, Ted Levine, Justice Smith and Daniella Pineda. Jeff Goldblum also stars as fan favorite Dr. Ian Malcolm. The previous film’s writers and director, Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly return as writers on this film and are joined by “Jurassic Park” and “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” director Steven Spielberg who serves as executive producer along with Trevorrow.

3 years after the events of the previous film, the island where the dinosaurs live on, Isla Nublar, is in a disaster state after a volcano eruption. Dr. Ian Malcolm (Goldblum) suggest that the government should let “nature correct man’s mistake” which refers to his comments in the first film. After the Senate sides with Malcolm, Claire Dearing (Howard), the former operator of Jurassic World and now dino-rights activist, is contacted by Benjamin Lockwood (Cromwell) and his aide Eli Mills (Spall) to setup a rescue mission to relocate the dinosaurs to another island. Claire is joined by Franklin Webb (Smith), a computer hacker, Zia Rodriguez (Pineda), a former Marine & paleoveterinarian and Owen Grady (Pratt), a Navy vet & Raptor trainer. The group is also joined by Ken Wheatley (Levine), a mercenary hired as head of the operation and his men. Once on the island, the mission takes an unexpected turn as its revealed that Wheatley and Mills had a much more nefarious plan for the dinosaurs than what Lockwood, Claire and Owen were told.

This movie started off quite entertaining and fun but it’s the 3rd act is where the movie falls apart entirely. From a storyline point, Malcolm’s statements are written in stone from the first film, so for our lead characters (Pratt & Howard) to completely ignore his statements put the fans of the franchise in an uncomfortable position to get behind the heroes of this film cause it meant turning on the previous hero. That was the beginning of the end. Now Pratt and Howard do give great performances and carry the film with some incredible visual effects. Smith’s character and performance was a bit annoying and over the top and everyone else was just solid and didn’t really standout. Goldblum’s performance is good for the brief screen time he had but that’s because he was great character and gave a great performance in the first 2 films. Just like how the previous film has some callbacks to the first, this film had callbacks to the first and second ones as well which are great but they do more damage than good by reminding us of 2 better films. In the film’s canon, this story almost tries to ignore the settings and circumstances of “The Lost World” and “Jurassic Park” which is just insulting to the fans of the franchise. By the time we get to the ending, the story was off the rails and they shoehorned a random plot point which made no sense and did nothing for the story as a whole. The film tries to have a somewhat happy ending but in reality as we’ve seen in the first 3 films and as Malcolm states in the movie, you can only ask yourself, How is this OK?

Overall, this was an entertaining film with 2 great performances from our lead characters and great visuals but has a convoluted story and really loses direction and focus by the end. It has typical tropes of a bad monster movie or a sci-fi film with no real direction or just over hyped and no payoff whatsoever.