Jurassic World: Rebirth

 I'm an easy mark where dinosaur movies are concerned. Just give me some big critters chasing tiny folks and I'm happy. 

Since Jurassic World: Rebirth serves up plenty of that, I left satisfied. Screenwriter David Koepp provides a decent-enough plot to hang the dino action on, and director Gareth Edwards keeps the action brisk. Actors Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey are fine as two mercenaries and a paleontologist, respectively, sent to extract dinosaur DNA from the remaining Jurassic giants congregating along the equator. Rupert Friend is the capitalist villain (almost a redundant description) who wants the DNA to create a cure for heart disease, but only after his company profits first. 

A large portion of the movie—too much, in retrospect—is spent on the water, where our blood-extracting heroes chase down a Mesosaur and rescue the hapless Delgado family (played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, and Audrina Miranda) after their boat overturns. This sequence plays like a love letter to Jaws, complete with Johansson doing her best imitation of Quint, firing harpoons from the bow of the ship. 

After that, the crew and its rescued additions are off to a conveniently located island that once housed an InGen research facility. Plenty of dinosaurs are still skulking about, including a Distortus rex (I had to Google it), a mutated dinosaur that should have 20th Century Fox issuing a cease-and-desist because of its similarity to the critter from the Alien franchise. 

My favorite scene involves the Delgados in a dangerous river escape, pursued by an angry Tyrannosaurus rex. It's reminiscent of a scene from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park novel that has never been featured in any of the movies, until now. 

Some of the dinosaur scenes in this franchise may be showing their age (pun intended), but they still provide the requisite thrills and fun. And, yep, if this spawns an eighth movie, I'll be there, natural selection willing.