With the welcome return of those stomping, chomping dinosaurs and another hitout for AI avenger M3GAN, there’s scares aplenty on the big screen this week
Director: Garth Edwards (Rogue One)
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Rupert Friend.
***
Same fight, with more convincing bite
With Jurassic World Rebirth we reach instalment number seven in the lucrative series spawned by Steven Spielberg’s 1993 dinos-on-the-rampage classic Jurassic Park.
We know enough by now to acknowledge that first blockbuster breakthrough will never be bettered. The formula that keeps serving up humans as possible snacks for prehistoric predators just doesn’t allow the wiggle room for expansion or variation.
Therefore the filmmakers are compelled to relentlessly double-down on the authenticity of the action scenes. And it is in this one department that Rebirth truly excels.
When the stompin’ and the chompin’ commences, you will be daunted and intimidated in thoroughly convincing fashion.
Just bear in mind that aside from an early dino-centric feast – after a scientist ill-advisedly drops a chocolate-bar wrapper in his lab – there is something of a wait to be endured before Rebirth gets busy with the good stuff.
Much of the first hour is spent mulching copious amounts of set-up and exposition as we get to know who will be edging towards and running from the gnarly stars of the show.
The most prominent players in proceedings are Zora (Scarlett Johansson) and Duncan (Mahershala Ali), two good buddies who have parlayed a past in military special-ops into a shady side-hustle doing the same kind of thing for major corporations.
Zora, Duncan and a mixed bag of lesser lights gradually find themselves on a secret assignment to an equatorial zone that (after the ravages posed by climate change) is now the only place on the planet that dinosaurs can feasibly survive.
The principal task of this mob is to extract select strains of dino DNA from three different species so that a dodgy pharmaceutical boss (Rupert Friend) can roll out a suite of miracle drugs for billions of bucks.
To be frank, the storylines traversed by Rebirth (which are the work of Jurassic Park’s original screenwriter David Koepp) lead nowhere in particular, and do not exactly have you rooting for the survival or otherwise of any one character.
However, once the fates conspire to have the entire cast stranded on a remote island, director Garth Edwards lets rip with a steady supply of truly exciting set pieces awash with both genuine aggression and vivid atmosphere.
On a technical level, the lighting and cinematography standards on display during the special-effects sequences are next-level great, and deserve to be witnessed on the biggest screen available.
Jurassic Park Rebirth is in cinemas now
M3GAN 2.0 (MA15+)
***
General release
The babysitting bot who turned out to be an AI-powered equivalent of Annabelle is back. Only this time – like Arnie In Terminator 2 – the once-dreaded doll M3GAN just might be fighting for a greater good. If you remember the first movie (a major hit a few years ago), you will recall that M3GAN’s sinister software was eventually deactivated on account of sustained bad behaviour and a body count that hit triple figures. Now she has been reluctantly switched on once more by her long-suffering programmer Gemma (Alison Williams) to combat the deadly threat posed by the new AI assassin AMELIA (aka Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android). Some long-overdue coding modifications for the title character means she can renew her over-protective relationship with Gemma’s teenage niece Cady (Violet McGraw). This sequel is at its strongest when playing strictly for ridiculous laughs instead of creepy chills, and for the most part, its desire to jauntily jolt its audience is effectively completed. Not sure they should go to the well a third time, however.
RIVIERA REVENGE (PG)
***
Selected cinemas
While it is getting continually more difficult getting a Hollywood comedy made and released these days, the love of the French for laughs with a lightness of touch remains undiminished. Yes, most of them are as unsurprising as they are inoffensive. Nevertheless, the better ones pay their way courtesy of good casting chemistry and attractive production. So proves to be the case for Riviera Revenge, a concoction as fluffy as a souffle, but not without its bursts of sweetly addictive flavour. Veteran star Andre Dussolier plays Francois, a retired military general who finds himself waging a whole new battle late in life when he suspects his beloved wife of 40 years (a wonderful Sabine Azema) may once have had an affair with a mutual friend (Thierry Lhermitte). Some decent chuckles are earned the right way here thanks largely to the lively lead performers, and the sun-dappled coastline of the Cote D’Azur looks as stunning as ever.
