SEQUEL TO 'JURASSIC WORLD' ALSO KNOWN AS 'FALLEN KINGDOM'

YEAR OF RELEASE: 2018

The fact that the dinosaurs are the most beloved aspect of the JURASSIC PARK series (or anything combining humans with dinos dating back to the 1950's) has become inner-contagious: Now the main characters not only adore the man-eating-monsters and/or leaf-eating giants that could crush cities given half a chance, but they want to actually save them from a second extinction...

That's after four movies where they've done nothing but wreak havoc on a myriad of civilians, and now, suddenly, they're like the kangaroo rat, or whatever endangered species conservationists find more important than humans by outlawing the burning of underbrush to keep the full-blown forest fires less drastic (ask any fireman, they'll tell ya)...

Rating: **

Sorry for the distraction; but there is a lotta fire here. Lava, actually. As the best sequence of FALLEN KINGDOM has the same overall cadence and aesthetic of frantic herds racing along the running humans that occurred halfway through the original, JURASSIC PARK, only the flowing superhot liquid makes the situation more edgy and urgent... looking. The problem is, since the same two dullards return from the horribly shallow JURASSIC WORLD... mousy-bitch turned environmentalist-warrior Bryce Dallas Howard and cookie-cutter handsome hero Chris Pratt... there's absolutely zero suspense since you know no one's gonna die; and if they did, who cares? Add on several new lame characters including a young dinosaur veterinarian (?) who resembles a punk rock version of androgynous hipster Thelma from Scooby Doo, and a much-too-young geeky tech guy who tries hard and fails harder as comic relief. So while the action can seem pretty intense, it's really all dressed up with nowhere to go...

Well not exactly... A selected Noah's Ark of dinos do wind up at an auction in a billionaire's mansion basement, sold to even wealthier buyers who plan to use the revamped prehistoric creatures as war machines — it's always the big bad military behind everything, and this time the hackneyed device (wasting modern-classic heavy Ted Levine in the process) not only makes no sense, but is a throwaway distraction for an overlong ripoff climax of when John Hammond's grandchildren dodged the raptors in that roomy JURASSIC PARK kitchen (remember the great raptor reflection scene?) or when THE LOST WORLD took the monsters a step beyond. Which is too bad because what winds up a silly zero-dimension carnival funhouse started out a semi-thrilling one-dimensional rollercoaster ride.