'Jurassic World': Bigger, scarier, not as cool as original

Theme parks, what fun!

Spend impossible amounts of money getting there. Spend more getting in. The lines go on for hours, the sun beats down, the food is nuked. Kids have meltdowns, husbands and wives have fights. By the end of the day, your head is throbbing and your legs are rubber.

Hey, let's go back tomorrow.

Although the attractions at the Isla Nubla complex known as Jurassic World continue to pack in the crowds, "the wow factor," as the park's operations manager, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), calls it, isn't what it used to be.

Which is why, in Jurassic World - the third sequel to Steven Spielberg's awesome Tyrannosaurus terror ride, 1993's Jurassic Park - a new breed of dino is introduced. Indominus rex is "bigger, scarier, cooler." It is also a genetically engineered hybrid, a prehistoric bouillabaisse cooked up in the lab and guaranteed to thrill.

Or kill. Which is what the monster with the Godzilla complex seems to want to do once it gets loose of its enclosure and starts stomping and chomping her way (yes, she's a she) across the island.

Woe to the actors - and behemoth herbivores - that get in her way.

Director Colin Trevorrow's only other feature, Safety Not Guaranteed, was a modest indie character piece with a time-travel hook. Jurassic World, like its genomed nemesis, is bigger, and it is pretty scary. But it's not nearly as cool, or as smart, as Jurassic Park.

The plot centers on two kids from Wisconsin - Gray (Ty Simpkins) and his older brother Zach (Nick Robinson) - sent to spend a week at the park in the care of their Aunt Claire. But Claire's too busy running things to actually shepherd her nephews around, so she sics her blase British assistant (Katie McGrath) on them. It's not long before Gray and Zach make their escape. Good timing: Indominus has escaped, too.

The supposedly impregnable glass gyrosphere the boys are rolling across the fields in? One whack of her mega-talons and Indominus has them in her clutches.

Scroll the cast list of Jurassic Park - Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Richard Attenborough, Samuel L. Jackson, Wayne Knight ("Hello, Newww-man") - and it looks kind of, well, awesome, compared to the lineup in Jurassic World.

Howard, who seems to be doing some kind of Jessica Chastain thing, is unfortunately wardrobed in business getup and heels that are anything but practical once she has to start running for her life.

The actress has the added challenge of feigning interest in the humorless and charisma-deprived Chris Pratt - he's Owen Grady, an ex-Navy guy who lives in an Airstream by a lake and has "imprinted" onto the velociraptors he has helped to train. Grady understands the creatures, and they understand him. And he doesn't think it's a good idea to be splicing a new species together. Not a good idea at all.

Vincent D'Onofrio, belt cinched tightly, eyes darting with duplicity, is the security-systems consultant Vic "Hidden Agenda" Hoskins. Irrfan Khan (The Lunchbox, Life of Pi) is Simon Masrani, the corporate titan who owns Jurassic World and who likes to pilot his own helicopter.

How does he fare when a flock of pterodactyls take wing, like Hitchcock's The Birds gone wild? Ah, the suspense.

Thank goodness - and geekness - for Jake Johnson, the New Girl slacker, who gets off the best lines in the movie. As Lowery, the control-room techie, he monitors the carnage on the big CCTV screens, trying not to spill soda on his prized Jurassic Park T-shirt (he got it for $150 on eBay). Lauren Lapkus plays his console colleague. She looks on in horror, too.

You know what they say. Some days you eat the dinosaur, some days the dinosaur eats you.

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