We discover what critics have had to say about this latest adventure with a few more familiar faces.
The Guardian: * “This could have been fun, but there is something so arbitrary and CGI-bound and jeopardy-free about it, as the film joylessly chops in bits of Alien, The Swarm, Bourne and 007. And the essential thrill of the first Jurassic Park movie, from Michael Crichton’s novel, is completely gone: that vital sense of something hubristic and transgressive and wrong in reviving dinosaurs in the first place.”
Rogerebert.com: ** “There’s no scene in the film that’s incompetent or entirely worthless. There’s no question that at this point, the “Jurassic” factory knows how to design and animate prehistoric creatures and integrate them with live-action scenes of actors running, screaming, shooting, setting fires, and the like. And yet the totality feels indifferently assembled, and the stalkings and chases and dino-battles are for the most part bereft of the life-and-death tension that every other franchise entry has managed to summon. And the plotting is abysmal, relying too heavily on coincidence and flukes of timing, retro-engineering personal connections between new and pre-existing characters where none exist, and handing the heroes major victories as casually as a hotel desk clerk giving a guest a room key, instead of letting them earn them through ingenuity.”
BBC.com: **** “Colin Trevorrow, who rebooted the franchise in 2015 with Jurassic World, hasn’t made the most profound or ground-breaking work, but Jurassic World Dominion is a deft, proudly excessive piece of old-fashioned big-screen entertainment. To make the obvious comparisons, it rounds off a sequel trilogy more satisfyingly than Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and it brings together old and new characters more satisfyingly than Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And I’m not just talking about human characters. Trevorrow welcomes back all of your favourite scaly fiends, but he also introduces various feathery newcomers who manage to be endearingly goofy and menacing at the same time.”
Empire: *** “If it doesn’t hit the Top Gun: Maverick heights of legacy sequels, Jurassic World Dominion is scattershot but entertaining, delivering fun, familiar set pieces. Come for the delight in seeing Neill, Dern and Goldblum together again, stay for the bit where a bloke on a scooter gets eaten.”
The Independent: ** “Nothing quite highlights the lack of identity in the Jurassic World trilogy than when its new characters are forced to stand face-to-face with the original trio of Dern, Neill, and Goldblum. They’re all delightful. Goldblum, especially, seems to have been given permission to spend most of the film making fun of whatever’s happening on screen. They might be here purely for fan-demanded wish fulfilment, but they’re also a stark reminder of why Spielberg’s film worked so well. Yes, it was always about the dinosaurs, but their wonder and dangers were always measured through the eyes of smart, grounded, capable people. That’s never been the case for Jurassic World.”
Rolling Stone: “Dominion feels like a contractual obligation at best, and a D.O.A. attempt to wring one last drop out of an already depleted brand at worst. At one point, a T. Rex wanders into a scene and surveying everything around him, throws back his head and let’s a long howl of rage. Had he done that for over two hours, he would have known exactly how we felt.”
Den of Geek: ** “The one thing the film has going for it—other than a few practical dinosaur effects and one nifty set piece involving Howard hiding in swamp water—is nostalgia. It’s genuinely nice to see Neill and Dern back in their roles, despite the fact the movie gives them nothing of interest to do. Goldblum isn’t serviced much better, but at least Malcolm gets to eventually mock the film’s paper thin plot. “
Variety: “Everything that happens at BioSyn goes more or less according to the “Jurassic” playbook. Still, it’s fun to see Dern and Neill together again on-screen, and Goldblum is great at making doomsday sound like a done deal. Trevorrow packs the movie with sly winks to the earlier films, plus “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and other Spielberg movies, and he commits to staging many of the dino interactions the way the master once did, by blending practical, animatronic critters with state-of-the-art CGI.”
The Telegraph: * “This series’ sixth film has a daft plot, groans with lousy action and makes the poor old dinosaurs humiliatingly surplus to requirements.”
Evening Standard: **** “There are many memorable lines in the sixth and possibly final instalment of the Jurassic films and most of them are delivered by 69-year-old Jeff Goldblum, whose bebop timing is as perfect as ever.”
The FT: ** “Relief comes with the olds. Legacy cast members Dern and Sam Neill return alongside Jeff Goldblum’s rock’n’roll chaos theorist. The screwy emphases of his line deliveries remain a blast. Together, the three veterans have a lightness of touch that almost saves their side of the plot as they are lured into the promethean grip of corporate chief Campbell Scott. For his part, Scott looks like a man in fancy dress as Apple CEO Tim Cook. The likeness is hard to miss, an intriguing move in a film that, like all studio juggernauts, picks its bad guys carefully. Riyadh gets a mention too. And obviously no one roots for a locust.”
The Times: * “This is a series of emotionally empty action sequences featuring two-dimensional characters fleeing from special effects dinos.”
Jurassic World Dominion is out in cinemas now.