For decades, movie dinosaurs were realised either by some form of puppetry or stop motion animation. Then, in 1993, Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park proved to be a game changer, amazing audiences with realistic prehistoric monsters created inside a computer. The problem since then has been in delivering that 'wow factor' - how can Hollywood keep on thrilling audiences when Spielberg's original set the bar so high? To be honest, I don't think they've found the answer yet.
The special effects in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom are technically brilliant, but the film doesn't really do anything that we haven't seen before, making the film as a whole yet another underwhelming experience. In desperation, the film-makers have resorted to more outrageous set-pieces, as well as inventing bigger and badder dinosaurs that never actually existed, all of which requires way too much suspension of disbelief.
And talking of pushing the boundaries of believability too far, the notion that velociraptors were intelligent enough to be trained is quite preposterous: they had pea brains, experts rating their intelligence on a par with a rabbit. Anyone stupid enough to try and become a veloci-whisperer would wind up as a meal for the ravenous lizard (except, of course, for the fact that velociraptors were, in reality, only the size of a large chicken!).
Other things that had me rolling my eyes: Chris Pratt becoming an MMA fighter to plough his way through countless bad guys; a dinosaur that pretends to be asleep to catch someone off-guard; velociraptor Blue knowing only to attack the villains; the transportation of numerous ginormous dinosaurs to a mansion in the US without the knowledge of the authorities; and obligatory child Maisie (Isabella Sermon) ultimately releasing the captured beasts into the wild because she feels sorry for them. Duh!
5.5/10 for the special effects, rounded down to 5 for annoying comedy-relief tech-geek Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) and for Toby Jones. There's never an excuse for Toby Jones.
