I
managed to get my daily dose of escapism today watching the latest installment in the
Jurassic Park franchise, ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’, or as I call it (in
tribute to Goldblum returning to the castlist), ‘Jeffrassic Jeff’.
While I thought it was great and, if anything, better than the last film, I must prefigure this by saying there wasn’t enough Jeff. But then, there never is. I don’t think any film in the history of cinema has had enough Jeff in it, even if you rolled all his screen work into one big Goldblum-a-thon; I once walked past him backstage at the Old Vic and even the corridor we were in didn't have enough Jeff in it, and Jeff was actually there.
While Troy McClure's one-time fast-talking agent didn’t feature as much as I (or anyone with a pulse) would have liked, the film still gripped me throughout, and rivaled ‘The Lost World’ for the role of best sequel of the series. While they did a great job reimagining the series with ‘Jurassic World’ they’ve managed to take the excitement even further; gently referencing the previous films here and there without troweling it on.
One thing the film has in droves is evil men, with Toby Jones, Rafe Spall, BD Wong, Ted Levine and more, all vying for the role of biggest villain. Some of the dinosaurs are quite unpleasant too. What surprised me most was how the film wasn’t afraid to be moving too, mainly by making the animals themselves more believable; if they’d just written Jeff into every scene we’d have a masterpiece on our hands. Still some Jeff’s better than no Jeff, as my nan used to say...
While I thought it was great and, if anything, better than the last film, I must prefigure this by saying there wasn’t enough Jeff. But then, there never is. I don’t think any film in the history of cinema has had enough Jeff in it, even if you rolled all his screen work into one big Goldblum-a-thon; I once walked past him backstage at the Old Vic and even the corridor we were in didn't have enough Jeff in it, and Jeff was actually there.
While Troy McClure's one-time fast-talking agent didn’t feature as much as I (or anyone with a pulse) would have liked, the film still gripped me throughout, and rivaled ‘The Lost World’ for the role of best sequel of the series. While they did a great job reimagining the series with ‘Jurassic World’ they’ve managed to take the excitement even further; gently referencing the previous films here and there without troweling it on.
One thing the film has in droves is evil men, with Toby Jones, Rafe Spall, BD Wong, Ted Levine and more, all vying for the role of biggest villain. Some of the dinosaurs are quite unpleasant too. What surprised me most was how the film wasn’t afraid to be moving too, mainly by making the animals themselves more believable; if they’d just written Jeff into every scene we’d have a masterpiece on our hands. Still some Jeff’s better than no Jeff, as my nan used to say...