Tag Archives: Chris Pratt

If the Three Stooges Made a Dinosaur Movie, it Would Look Like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Only it Would be Funny

The trailer for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom tells you the whole plot. The island the dinosaurs are on is about to get blowed up by a volcano, so a rescue operation is launched. Oh, no! The bad guys were lying! Who would have seen that coming? The bad guys are trying to weaponize the dinosaurs! Mayhem ensues.

From the beginning of the opening sequence to the end, the thin storyline is driven primarily by idiocy. One person after another, good guys and bad, make ludicrously horrible decisions. If that weren’t enough, most of the action sequences rely on implausible events that would qualify as slapstick if they were funny. Unfortunately, they’re not.

Fallen Kingdom can’t even maintain any consistency with its own internal rules. In fact, it makes zero attempt to do so. A dinosaur that rips through metal barriers as if they were paper is stopped by a thin wooden door. Dinosaurs have ultra-keen senses of smell when they need to but can’t smell squat if the right person is trying to hide. Tranquilizers are effective, until they’re not, and they repeatedly wear off instantly at precisely the right/wrong moment. Dinosaurs move like lightning, except when they inexplicably pause to menace a potential victim just long enough for someone/something to appear and save the day.

Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) IMDb.com

Don’t worry, we’re the good guys. She can’t see, hear, or smell us.
Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) IMDb.com

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The Magnificent Seven May Not be Truly Magnificent, But at Least It’s Fun

On the heels of a summer of remakes nobody wanted or asked for (Ghostbusters, Ben-Hur, Pete’s Dragon), we have The Magnificent Seven, a light but entertaining shoot ‘em up that will never reach the iconic status of the 1960 movie of the same name or Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, but will provide a fun diversion for a couple of hours.

(l to r) Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ethan Hawke, Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Vincent D'Onofrio and Martin Sensmeier in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Columbia Pictures' THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.

(l to r) Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ethan Hawke, Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Vincent D’Onofrio and Martin Sensmeier in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Columbia Pictures’ THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.

In director Antoine Fuqua’s latest iteration, the bandits stealing food from a village of farmers are replaced by an evil gold mining company trying to steal the land. Emma (Haley Bennett), wife of a murdered villager, sets off to hire some defenders, and with the help of Chisolm (Denzel Washington), manages to assemble a band of western archetypes, including a wise-cracking gambler/sleight of hand artist (Chris Pratt), a confederate sharpshooter (Ethan Hawke), a gun/knife master (Byung-hun Lee), a Mexican outlaw (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), an Indian (Martin Sensmeier), and a mountain man the size of a mountain (Vincent D’Onofrio). Continue reading