Tuesday, June 23, 2015

No one's impressed by a dinosaur anymore.

When I was around eleven or twelve, we went to Florida and did the whole Disneyworld and Universal Studios thing. And minutes upon arriving at Universal, I recall my mom had to go to the bathroom (I mean, the exact f--king minute we got there). Okay, we'll wait here.

We're sitting there...and it's clear, like, completely obvious, something has happened. Something has gone wrong. Eventually my mom comes storming back to us, furious. Apparently, the bathroom was out of paper towels, and when my mom questioned some hapless employee, (according to legend) the lady's answer was, So? If this is a movie, this is the part where you say out loud, Oh, bitch. You done f--ked up now.

Long story short(ish), my mom went apeshit, complained to someone, and ended up getting some Willy Wonka Golden Ticket-esque VIP Pass. We now were granted the ability to not wait in line on four (4) rides. But instead of signaling an employee and being quietly ushered past the rope, my mom dragged us through the entire line, jamming this f--king badge-thing in the face of thousands of angry tourists. It was the worst.

But also kind of awesome.

It turns out that employees at Jurassic World are also highly skilled at totally f--king up, and as much as it hurt my soul to watch, these careless mistakes led to greatness. And by greatness, I mean the best parts of a decidedly average film. Yes friends, despite it making eleventy billion dollars, and starring the fantastically charismatic Chirs Pratt, put me down in the camp of You're f--king kidding me, right?

Looking back, I don't know why I had such a nerd-boner for this one headed in. Of course I liked the first one, but I think I was just a little too old when it came out to f--king love it (my younger brother Nikos wore out a VHS copy). The second one was dumb, but enjoyable, and the third one was a step up from that. But this fourth one? I don't know...I thought it was going to be really, really good. Like, Mad Max: Fury Road [review] good. Maybe even better.

Um, nope.

The idea of genetically-mutated dinosaurs seemed great on paper, and Starlord leading his Raptor Brigade on a dino-hunt via dirtbike appeared to have been plucked straight from the sticky pages of my Dream Journal. But as the film wore on, and yet another f--king moronic employee did something, well, f--king moronic...I began to think, f--k me. And f--k this. In fact, f--k everything. But...

...then I thought: m.brown! It's f--king dinosaurs. You love dinosaurs. It's in your (Dino) DNA. Stop being a f--king asshole. 

That was a pretty big but. And even though I like those, and I can not lie, a wise man once said something I'll never forget: Hold on to your buts. I can't. Hell, I won't. So, let me break form for a change, and let go of all my buts. This is dedicated to not only the millions that apparently loved Jurassic World, but even those few a-holes (like me) that didn't.


Jurassic World sucked. It was, like, sooo bad. *flicks cigarette*

This raptor is actually the character I related to the most.
Butttttttttttttt...
  • Um, it has f--king dinosaurs in it. Like, a shit-ton of them.
  • We get to see raptors in these weird head-trap contraptions. And they get totally pissed!
  • Not only was Tour guide Lady hot, and British, but she totally gets killed in the best possible way. What's not to love?
  • B.D. Wong is back. You can't not love B.D. Wong.
  • Chris Pratt gets to fix his own motorcycle down by the river. He's sooo dreamy.
  • They fed a shark to that giant water beast. Read that again. That sentence had not only 'shark' in it, but also 'giant water beast'. Those are two separate things!
  • I'm pretty sure I saw Dr. Ian Malcom's book on Sarcasm Guy's desk. That has to count for something.
  • Jimmy Fallon is in it. Everyone likes Jimmy Fallon.
  • That glass ball scene, though entirely stupid, was pretty f--king awesome, right?
  • Margarita Guy!
  • Someone shoots a bazooka at a raptor. That has to be some sort of cinematic record for awesomeness.
  • That scene where the raptors are chasing the truck! That one dives headfirst into the driver's side door? Brilliant!
  • The score! It's pretty much the best music ever to watch dinosaurs to.
  • There's a pretty lengthy battle between three (or four-ish) dinosaurs at the end. If you don't like that, you basically shouldn't be allowed outside. Or to live.

Jurassic World is the best movie ever! *attempts raptor noise*

Butttttttttttttttttttt...
  • Holy shit that was a lot of in-movie advertising. After I finished my Blizzard at the Hilton, I was really pissed about that.
  • Those two brothers were the worst. In fact, they were so annoying, I began to hope each was gored to death on the horns of a triceratops. Oh, and the third horn? Please drive it through my skull and/or balls. Little bro was either in science-nerd mode or full on hysterics. Big bro, when not brooding about his boner, was a total dick.
  • What about the infinite number of unaccompanied 16 year old girls? I think we got it after the first 900.
  • What about he two wiz-kids in the control room? Sarcasm Guy and the lady who looks like every co-manager at Old Navy. Those two couldn't head up operations at Wally World, let alone f--king Jurassic.
  • Why was it essentially a re-telling of the first movie? But without Jeff Goldblum? This is acceptable?
  • How do explain that possibly retarded security guard, who was somehow solely left in charge of the biggest f--king dinosaur on the planet? 
  • What about the broken glass they'll get around to fixing? A multi-million dollar amusement park where the f--king MAKE DINOSAURS, but window repair? Baffling!
  • That guy that fell into the pen, you know, Popeye's son, someone actually wrote the character...and didn't change their mind. You're okay with this?
  • You're really going to tell me that it makes sense that the most advanced military in the world has decided Raptors! We need Raptors! Oh, f--k off, D'Onofrio.
  • This movie made Chris Pratt about as exciting as Harrison Ford. On talk shows. Seriously, Emmit from The Lego Movie [review] made more of impression on his co-workers than Pratt in JW.
  • Was steer-dropping Guy eating a sandwich? This guy, actually might be the worst employee at JW, and that's like being the cruelest Nazi, or the most useless Kardashian. That shit's next level.
  • You're really going to have a dinosaur that can camouflage itself? And you're also going to have the first guy to see this dinosaur yell exactly that? I wish I could make my disappointment really hard to see.
  • It might be my eyes, but no bullshitting here, I actually thought the dinosaurs looked...faker. 
  • That scene where BDH rolls up her sleeves seemed straight out of a 1920's cartoon. I can play with the boys, see. I tells ya, I can!
  • You can hear a giant dinosaur walk away...but you can't hear it walk back to you. Seems reasonable.
  • They evacuate the whole park...to the street. Yep.
  • Apparently they never feed the pterodactyls. There had to be a reason they devoured everything immediately.
  • It turns to nighttime IN A F--KING INSTANT. This can't happen in a legitimate movie. Nope.
  • We had to sit through dinosaurs talking to each other. Without subtitles (man, that would have been so rad).
  • The ending, though awesome, actually made my brain hurt. Not only do you have BDH, in heels, outrunning a T-Rex, but this movie actually had the balls to make the slo-motion hero shot the triumphant return...of a raptor. Just. F--k. Off.
Which is probably the same thing that Univeral employee was thinking about concerning my irate mother and the lack of paper towels. I mean, who gets upset about something so trivial and makes a big f--king deal about it?


Who would even bother?

18 comments:

  1. Fantastic review! The kids are the worst! They could have been written out and the movie would still function without them.

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    1. Ha...thanks. I completely agree. And if you're going to include them, throw a curve and have them eaten by a dinosaur. Or two.

      But it's a winning formula: Two smart kids + Dozens of dinosaurs x incompetent adults = Jurassic Something.

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  2. Excellent review! I fucking hated those kids. The movie would've been better without them. I can't even appreciate the glass ball scene. You're telling me an amusement park thinks it's totally cool for a 16 year old (who admittedly doesn't have a license) to drive this million dollar glass ball around with another kid inside on top of it? It's not like he was on a track or something, he was essentially off roading. I realize this is a dinosaur park movie, but that was SO stupid.

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    1. Hahaha...my brother made the same argument. So...the park is shut down, but no one cares that one of those magic balls is still randomly driving around a feeding frenzy. Again, it all comes back to the worst employees ever. You'd think after the first one, maybe the hiring practices would be little more...strict.

      I'm with you...Logic couldn't afford a ticket to JW.

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  3. OH
    MY
    GOD

    Favorite review of a movie...EVER!!!! BAH! I didn't hate this. I mean, every single fucking thing you say is 100% correct...and like, this movie is SO, SO, SO bad...but I had a blast watching it. Granted...I was drunk again, with the bestie, so, like...that makes a difference.

    I mean, that formula did make me like Godzilla more than...everyone else.

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    1. Thanks, man! I actually didn't hate it either, it's just really, really f--king stupid. I actually enjoyed the stupidity of San Andreas more...if that makes sense. It was kind of an acceptable level of ridiculousness. Oh well, if I was thirteen...I'd probably still be in the theater.

      I totally have to start drinking. Like, asap.

      (Godzilla can suck a bag of dicks, by the way. A huge bag.)

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  4. I think every action related movie this year will be compared to Fury Road and nothing's going to be better than the epic post apocalyptic ride of Max.. nothing.

    I had a friend who liked Jurassic World and disliked Mad Max.. she is the kind of person who goes for those mushy mid-scenes in between that "add" story.. well, I clearly don't give a fuck about the story when I could go on an epic ride of action, explosions and madness!

    In other words, I loved watching Pratt.. but the rest was meh.

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    1. 100% with you. Maybe if I'd have seen JW first, I might have been way more tolerant. But after Mad Max? Eh. It all seemed kind of silly.

      Holy Hell...I'm with you again. All those scenes that make these kinds of movies an actual story make me want to jam a knife in each eye. I don't care about budding relationships. I'm not even really interested in the bullshit science. Just give me dinosaurs running amok. Like, to the point were people are hiding in their hotel rooms, hear a knock at the door, ask who it is, hear someone say room service, and then open the door and a raptor chews their face off.

      Okay...maybe not that stupid...but still.

      I love Pratt, but honestly felt he was neutered here by such a lame script.

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  5. That's so many boos! :D My main one would be that I cared waaaaay more about CGI dinosaurs that were just chillin' on that meadow and got killed than people in the movie.

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    1. I know...I was feeling like an extra stinky a-hole. It's kind of sad...making fun of a kid's movie (that everyone loved), but it's kind of my thing.

      The friend that I went with? He said the same thing as we got in the car. I didn't give a shit about any of the people. Totally. I was way more protective of the raptors and the various slaughtered vegetarians.

      Poor guys.

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  6. Great review. I had a feeling when this movie was first announced that it was going to turn out bad, I mean come on just look at how bad Jurassic Park III was 14 years ago. Oh and those kids, yeah they were horrible, sadly I'd bet this won't be the last time we see them on screen either.

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    1. First, I am one of the few people that actually enjoyed the third movie. I recall preferring it to the second one (I'm not sure how that would hold up if I revisited them).

      Those kids were the worst, though, to be fair...I think all kids in all movies are generally the worst. It's like no one knows how to write kids as anything other that annoying a-holes. Though...as a teacher....that kind of makes sense.

      I'm sure they'll be back.

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  7. There were so many inconsistencies, but I just went with it. It's a crappy popcorn movie. Mad Max Fury Road really spoiled me b/c every movie sucks in comparison.

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    1. Like, soooooooooooo many inconsistencies. But I'm with you...you either have to just go with it, leave the theater, or write a shitty blog post about it. Clearly, we can tell what option I took.

      Agreed. MM:FR was just cinematic insanity! Ruined the rest of the action movies...at least so far.

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  8. Definitely not your eyes, these dinos looked fake as shit. That's what swapping animatronics for CG gets you. So lame.

    This one didn't do it for me either. I mean, early in the movie, homeboy pours gas all over himself. Couldn't at least ONE person said, "Bro, you really smell like gas"?!

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    1. Not all of the original was animatronics though, right? I mean, even the long shots looked bad, and there you can fudge a lot of the detail. Either way, lame indeed. Two decades later things should look better.

      I totally forgot about that bit, but yeah, just another example of the script's laziness.

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  9. Wow, that was hilarious! Just saw this over the weekend and just finished writing my review, posting tomorrow. Other than the fact I thought the dinos looked pretty good (apparently, I don't see so well), we're right in sync. This was soooooo dumb I'm willing to believe it was a conspiracy by the park employees to screw this place up intentionally. I mean, it can't be possible to be that incompetent by accident, right?

    One of my favorite bits of stupidity was the voice describing the gyrosphere ride and how the technology used to make it would keep it upright at all times and within seconds the damn thing is upside down. Everything that happened in this movie was one epic fail after another. But hey, dinosaurs eating people and killing each other so much is forgiven.

    Oh, there is one other area where we diverge. I mean, I know he was an idiot and you're right he shouldn't be running anyone's theme park, but I really liked Sarcasm Guy. He was by far my favorite character. That moment when he approaches Co-Worker Chick for a big, dramatic kiss and gets shot down cracked me up. He generally made me laugh. Every conversation in the movie should have included him just being a smart-ass to whoever else was talking.

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    1. Quite honestly the worst employees in the history of film. But...it wasn't their fault. Each was dumber that the previous one. Had anyone had a functioning brain...the movie would have been 15 minutes long. Not that I'm complaining...anymore.

      That gyrosphere sequence basically embodies the whole movie doesn't it? Beyond ridiculous, but kind of good, silly fun, you know? Maybe I was in a bad mood that day, but I just hoped it wouldn't be f--king stupid. Sigh.

      Sarcasm Guy? He was definitely the comic relief (the shirt was a nice touch), but I was to enraged by all the buffoonery to give that guy a pass. He was like Head Asshole at F--kface Mountain. Sweet gig, but it drove me crazy. If this were straight comedy...I would have loved him.

      Looking forward to your post. And sleep.

      (those are two unrelated items, by the way...it's just late)

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