#david lacono

Doom patrol is over. The Umbrella Academy is on its last leg. The sandman will be back god knows when.

The new supreme is among us..

Take a walk with me here. Over 30 years ago, I was old enough to be there for the opening of a new restaurant that served the most thick juicy and burger that filled me with joy and fear because I didn't think I would ever taste something sensational again. Over the next few years, I kept going back and trying new things and the quality went from perfection to great to good and then it fell off and I stopped eating there. Then, a rebrand happened and even though it had a similar menu with the same care taken in making that burger great, it was still missing that special sauce. After that, nothing else on that menu ever tasted the same and it went so far off the rails by introducing impossible meats and all plant based options. I decided to try my favorite meal one more time and what I got was a complete nothing burger. The toppings are there, but it tasted like nothing going down and it just sat in my stomach like a stone. Slowly dissolving into what I can only describe as indifference and food depression. That is what the Jurassic franchise has become and this film solidifies that. I don't understand how we got here. Yes, you get some decent dino action, but even then this film somehow made me feel an overwhelming amount of nihilism by the time the T-Rex shows up. Speaking of nihilism, remember when we had well written characters that you fell in loved with and you genuinely feared for their lives as they're being hunted by Raptors? Yeah, so do I. Not even the star power of the lead actors could save us from this lackluster installment.

Scarlett Johansson leads this new expedition as the covert operation expert, Zora Bennett. I have seen Scarlet deliver more definitive character work in other roles, but as Zora, she seems to just be there for the fun and not really for character development. Zora's on a mission and that's about it until the end when she actually shows some humanity. Mahershala Ali was great as Zora's team leader and oldest friend, Duncan Kincaid. The two of them had the strongest chemistry in the film and I could feel the friendship when they're together. Mahershala isn't hanging out just as much as Scarlett, but for the majority of the first half, their in a completely different and possibly better spec ops film. Ed Skrein is always fun and as another member of Zora's team, Bobby Atwater, he serves his gun totting purpose. Rupert Friend was good as the standard pharmaceutical representative of a "mysterious" corporation, Martin Krebs. He was basically there to be the money and he was just the same as all the others in this franchise. Jonathan Bailey was really doing his best to bring some life into this film as paleontologist, Dr. Henry Loomis. He nails that level of wonder and appreciation for the dinosaurs in one particularly beautiful scene. He was the life of the film and if we only focused on the him and the rest of the team, it would've been more compelling.

Its not a Jurassic film without the obligatory children and\or family being in danger and oh man did I not care one bit if any of them survived. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo was doing his best to be the caring and understanding father, Reuben Delgado. He would doing anything for his kids, but man was he weak as hell. Luna Blaise carries the most weight and leads most of the time as his oldest daughter Teresa. She was good at delivering the conflict between her and her father. Although she may be the teen, she has a horrible taste in boys. David Iacono was perfectly lazy and for the most part useless as Teresa's boyfriend, Xavier Dobbs. He has one great scene with a few dinos that was hilarious, but after that, I was waiting for him to get eaten. Audrina Miranda was cute as Reuben's youngest daughter, Isabella. There was something that could've been played with there as she was quickly becoming traumatized from all the killer dinosaurs coming after them every five minutes. Aside from one of the dumbest scenes toward the last ten minutes of the film, the raft sequence was the highlight for the entire family arc.