Words by JANE CROWTHER

In Gareth Edwards’ reboot of the JP franchise, set after Dominion but without any of the same characters, dinosaurs are old news. Dying in their zoos and no longer pulling the crowds, the only place they flourish is an equatorial island that is off-limits to visitors. Of course, big pharma, personified by Rupert Friend’s gimlet-eyed rep, won’t let a ban stop them from sending a team there to harvest dino DNA to find a cure for heart disease. Enter Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) a special-ops hardass who’s struggling with morality after the death of a colleague and looking for a payday. Along for the ride, the obligatory palaeontologist Dr Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), swallowing his misgivings for a chance to see his obsession in the wild, and a salty seadog (Mahershala Ali) who’s going to boat them all to an ex-DNA experimentation lab long-abandoned on the island. Obviously, things don’t go to plan. 

The first fly in the ointment is a family, inadvisably bobbing across the beast-infested ocean from Barbados to Cape Town in a modest sailing boat as a vacation (no, noone on-screen can understand why either). When their boat is capsized by a Mosasaurus, they become part of the group heading to the island – and prospective dinner for the previously extinct. As the team are shipwrecked, chased down a river by a swimming, gnashing T-Rex (an exemplary sequence that rivals the original’s first Tyrannosaur tete a tete), attacked by Quetzalcoatlus and observe a Titanosaurus romance, their perspectives and alliances shift as they hold onto the rescue hope of a helicopter arriving in 48 hours. Plus there’s a cute, portable Aquilops called Delores, who likes licorice.

Essentially a theme park ride – boat rollercoaster, log flume, escape room, gift shop – Rebirth gets the recipe right with its casting. Johansson brings unexpected compassion to a rote role and is clearly having great fun alongside Bailey, serving as an audience avatar as he noisily eats mints, questions ethics and gazes in awe at CGI critters, rather like Sam Neill before him. Both are incredibly charming and sell a story as old as a mosquito in amber. Ali and Friend also seem to get the memo about nostalgic tropes; Ali is a charismatic cynic who becomes a hero, Friend, the all-out bad suit. It’s surprising he doesn’t get chomped on a toilet given the callbacks nodded to here. Less magnetic are the family and a pot-head boyfriend, though his jungle pee does provide humour. 

Daft but decent, Rebirth doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it does manage to harness some of that original Spielberg magic and entertain for the time it’s on screen. And it will make you want to buy a Delores as soon as the lights come up – as well as a Snickers bar, such is the product placement.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs courtesy of Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
Jurassic World: Rebirth is in cinemas now