RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY JUNE 12, 2015.
Richard’s CP24 reviews for “Jurassic World,” “Slow West” and “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Posts Tagged ‘Indominus Rex’
RICHARD’S “CANADA AM” REVIEWS FOR JUNE 12 WITH BEVERLY THOMSON.
Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “Jurassic World,” “Slow West” and “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Metro In Focus: Chris Pratt’s meteoric rise began at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
As Dave Edmunds once warbled, “From small thinks baby, big things one day come.”
In Hollywood right now no one is bigger than Chris Pratt. His films Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie were two of the top five grossing hits of last year and Jurassic World is pegged to light up the box office with an estimated $100 million take this weekend.
Esquire has declared him “awesome” and The Guardian noted “there’s a lot of love for Chris Pratt right now.” He has momentum, the kind of Hollywood heat that gets your name mentioned as the lead in every big movie, including the proposed reboot of Indiana Jones. In fact, some even label him the next Harrison Ford.
The hype swirling around the affable thirty-five-year-old actor places him at the top of the Hollywood ladder, but it certainly wasn’t always that way. A scan of the early credits on IMDB does not point toward superstardom.
Guest spots on the short-lived bounty hunter series The Huntress and a third lead in the so-little-seen-it-doesn’t-even-have-a-Rotten-Tomatoes-rating action film The Extreme Team seem positively high profile compared to his first credit.
Pratt was working as a waiter at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant in Maui when actress Rae Dawn Chong came in for lunch. She happened to be in the midst of casting Cursed Part 3, a short horror satire about a director who tries to convince his actors and crew not to flee when a mysterious killer visits the set.
Pratt was living with a group of friends in a van, doing stand-up comedy and community theatre when he approached the Quest for Fire star. “I said, ‘I know you. You’re a movie star, right?’ She said, ‘You’re cute. Do you act?’”
Chong thought he’d be a good fit for the part of “a beautiful kid to play the Brat, an actor who complains out loud about having to make out with an older actor, played by Donna Mills.”
The film was set to roll in five days and after a quick audition Chong offered Pratt a plane ticket to California and the role of Devon. “I had far more confidence than capability at the time,” he says, “but I knew I could do it.”
Shot next door to Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, Cursed Part 3 isn’t much of a movie, but Pratt made $700 for his debut, money he invested in a car so he could drive to auditions.
“I went from waiting tables in Maui to waiting tables in Beverly Hills,” he says of Cursed Part 3, “but with a little bit of movie experience under my belt.”
The film was a stepping-stone to bigger and better jobs, including the role that made him a star, Pawnee City Hall shoe-shiner Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation.
Movie stardom was harder to come by. Losing blockbuster roles like Avatar’s Jake Sully and Captain James Kirk of the rebooted Star Trek was discouraging, but he was determined to act. “People have to work,” he said. “I just don’t want it to be at a restaurant.”
With big budget movies on the way like the proposed sci fi adventure Passengers with Jennifer Lawrence and an all-star remake of The Magnificent Seven, it doesn’t look like he’ll have to dust off the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. uniform again any time soon.
JURASSIC WORLD: 3 ½ STARS. “has enough of its predecessor’s DNA to be worth a look.”
For the fourth time all heck breaks loose on Isla Nublar when gene-spliced dinosaurs get loose and start chowing down on humans. And you thought genetically modified food was bad for your health.
“Jurassic World” is set in a theme park of the same name, a bigger, flashier version of the one first seen in “Jurassic Park.” For years over 20,000 people a day have come to visit the dino petting zoo and see the T-Rex in his “natural” habitat. Think SeaWorld with Archaeopteryx instead of dancing dolphins and you get the idea. Business is brisk but park director Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) feels their exhibits are old hat, as exciting as a clown in an elephant suit.
“No one is impressed by dinosaurs anymore,” she says. “Consumers want bigger, louder and more teeth.”
Her solution is to genetically manufacture a designer dinosaur, a hybrid of T-Rex DNA and bits and pieces from several other creatures. Called Indominus Rex, it’s a fearsome fifty-foot tall beast with fierce intelligence and an attitude to match. When it escapes (that’s not a spoiler, just a fact of life in the “Jurassic” films) Claire calls upon dino trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt)—he’s the Cesar Millan of the dinosaur world—to bring the situation under control before her two visiting nephews get eaten or a military contractor (Vincent D’Onofrio) who wants to repurpose the beasts as weapons.
“Jurassic World” is a respectable entry into the “Jurassic Park” genus. It’s a monster movie, with a bigger, louder and toothier villain than the previous films, but not quite as many thrills. It’s near impossible to top the visceral thrills of Steven Spielberg’s original movie so director Colin Trevorrow doesn’t try. Instead he weaves an homage or two to “Jurassic Park” into the fabric of the story and makes sure there are roaring dinosaurs and snarling Raptors on screen as much as possible. They run, leap and do battle in a climatic scene that can only be described as ridonkulous. The tempered skill Spielberg brought to the first movie is replaced by bombast, but what can we expect form a movie whose manifesto is, “No one is impressed by dinosaurs anymore; consumers want bigger, louder and more teeth”?
Pratt takes a step closer to claiming the role of Indiana Jones by playing Craig as the wisecracking but charming and resourceful hero and “New Girl” star Jake Johnson offers some welcome comic relief. Howard is self-possessed and intense, and has good chemistry with Pratt.
“Jurassic World” is a fun summer distraction, with enough of its predecessor’s DNA to be worth a look.
