Jurassic World (2015)

"Twenty-two years after the events of Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar now features a fully functioning dinosaur theme park, Jurassic World, as originally envisioned by John Hammond. After 10 years of operation and visitor rates declining, in order to fulfill a corporate mandate, a new attraction is created to re-spark visitor's interest, which backfires horribly."

I remember way back in the far distant past of 1993 that I was sixth in a queue of eager moviegoers over a mile long which ran all the way down the street from the cinema, past a park, and over a bridge. The original "Jurassic Park" was so hyped that the world went a little bit crazy that opening weekend for dinosaurs, and I'm proud to admit that I was part of the insanity. I may have been too old for it, but I still bought the action figures, books, and anything else labelled with the "Jurassic Park" brand.

Twenty-two years later, nothing seems to have changed apart from the age of the original audience. With box office takings of over $551 million so far, "Jurassic World" has become an unprecedented success for a third sequel, but it's not only due to my generation's nostalgia.

Dinosaurs have and always will be one of the biggest draws for audiences of all ages. Everyone loves dinosaurs! Stick a dinosaur in a movie and it's almost guaranteed money in the bank. A couple of dud sequels in the "Jurassic Park" series have done nothing to diminish the yearning to see more of the same.

Velociraptors and motorcycles are cool.

Since I'm trying to be not my seemingly negative and jaded self, let me just interject the obvious fact that "Jurassic World" is a PG-13 Summer movie meant for little kids and family audiences. As such, it's no better or worse than any other movie released to get asses on seats for money this year, and it's full of all the spectacle that you would imagine.

Unfortunately, "Jurassic World" is overlong at 124 minutes, and it often suffers both from lag and unsympathetic characters. In fact, the action doesn't even get going until around an hour in, so if you haven't seen it yet, you can arrive late and not miss anything very important. Apart from a load of exposition and crowd scenes of visitors to the new Jurassic theme park, the CGI dinosaurs mostly mill around aimlessly and aren't nearly as impressive or groundbreaking as in the original.

Chris Pratt plays an ex-marine who has semi-trained a bunch of velociraptors in one of many "Chekhov's Gun" tropes which predictably play out later on in the story. As the most charismatic actor in "Jurassic World", he tends to steal the show, especially from the younger actors who are more or less forgetten during the second-half.

Bryce Dallas Howard provides some corporate eye-candy with a heart, but minor characters and the other co-stars tend to remain minor and one-dimensional with no surprises or chemistry whatsoever. Having none of the original "Jurassic Park" cast members even in cameos, "Jurassic World" appears to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater for the sake of making everything "new".

And now for some SPOILERS. Stop reading here if you don't want to know!

Imodium Rex will scare the shit out of you.

SPOILERS

The best part of "Jurassic World" is undoubtedly a death scene at the 80 minute mark which almost rivals the opening sequence of "Jaws" (1975) in terms of excitement. Yes, it's the one with the aquatic Mosasaurus which is heavily featured in the marketing. Being CGI and rated PG-13, all the deaths are quite bloodless, but this one is rather good despite those limitations.

All the predictable fights ensue, and the Pterodactyls or Pteranodons which are a big part of Michael Crichton's novel are nicely used. Fans of flying reptiles will be pleased.

Obviously, the biggest thing in "Jurassic World" is the much touted super-dinosaur which is called Imodium Rex or something similar made-up for the sake of it. There's no great educational exploration of dinosaurs or any apparent scientific accuracy here, but the story works as a fantasy-adventure for the intended audience.

END OF SPOILERS

Overall, there's nothing really to hate in "Jurassic World", but there's not a lot that most people haven't already seen before, either in the previous "Jurassic Park" movies or clones. A few "in-jokes" and homages don't detract from the considerable retreading of the same ground as "Jurassic Park", but they don't add anything new or memorable either.

If you just want to relax, switch off most of your analytical brain functions, and enjoy a kids' movie (or have a family to take with you), you won't go wrong by choosing "Jurassic World" over the other theatrical offerings this month.

Including nods to similar scenes at the end of "Jurassic Park", this love letter to the fans (both young and old) is a worthy finale, but it will cause déjà vu.

Bad Milo (2013)

"A horror comedy centred on a guy who learns that his unusual stomach problems are being caused by a demon living in his intestines."

If you've ever wondered what would happen if you mixed "Office Space" (1999) with "Basket Case" (1982), "Bad Milo", the latest horror-comedy coming to VOD services in a couple of weeks' time from Magnet Releasing ("the genre arm of Magnolia Pictures"), is the answer. According to their official website, "Bad Milo" will also be released theatrically on October 4th, but I'd hazard a guess that it'll be limited.

As usual, some unscrupulous screener-monkey has already uploaded "Bad Milo" to the streaming sites. I would moan about how it's about time that distributors stopped giving out screeners willy-nilly to all these lame horror bloggers who either just want freebies or to upload the movie illegally—especially as I've never asked them for anything myself—but as it's only from Magnet Releasing (who kept following and then unfollowing me on Twitter every 2 days until I blocked them), and I hate horror-comedies, I couldn't care less. "Bad Milo" isn't something which I would have gone out of my way to watch otherwise.

It's not that "Bad Milo" is badly made or anything—in fact, it has very good production values for a low-budget comedy full of puerile toilet humour—but it's a one-trick pony. Once the "hilarious" joke about a demon that lives in a guy's ass has been beaten to death (almost literally!), this predictable crap has very little to offer other than remixing scenes and elements from more famous movies in ways which frequently cross the line between homage and blatant ripoff.

As you can see in the picture below, Milo the ass-demon looks a lot like Baby Sinclair from the kids' TV show "Dinosaurs" (1991). He also has the big-eyed cuteness and a few other characteristics of Gizmo the Mogwai from "Gremlins" (1984). Writer/director Jacob Vaughan's influences are extremely obvious, especially his homages to the more evil gremlins, "Ghoulies" (1985), and Belial from "Basket Case". Basically, the horror parts are a throwback to all the little creature/puppet movies of the '80s, and consequently, "Bad Milo" brings nothing new to the table here whatsoever.

Everybody Loves Milo.

Clearly, "Bad Milo" is a product of the same creatively bankrupt culture which allows these so-called comedies and parodies to elude prosecution for copyright infringement, and it begs the question of how much is really "fair use" before someone starts throwing the word "plagiarism" around? When you can so easily identify the "borrowings" from other movies, how is that not theft? At the very least, it's extremely lazy filmmaking. If Mike Judge, Joe Dante, Frank Henenlotter, and Charles Band gave Jacob Vaughan their permission to "re-imagine" their movies then forget I said anything, but I highly doubt that such a thing ever happened.

Apart from casually noticing that the lead, Ken Marino, is channelling Ray Romano and Zach Braff at the same time (which may just be his normal acting style for all I know), it's pretty obvious to me that the situational comedy of "Office Space" forms the core of this movie. There's the slimy boss (in this case played by Patrick Warburton), firing/leaving interview scenes, embezzlement, retribution, and all the poetic justice of "Office Space", plus... wait for it... Stephen Root aka Milton "Stapler" Waddams is in this too!!!

Since I'm considered such a pariah by modern filmmakers and the distribution companies that I had to watch the "Bad Milo" screener semi-legally, the irony of the whole situation isn't wasted on me, but I'm still going to call this movie out for its lack of originality even though I haven't been swindled out of anything other than my wasted time. Needless to say, I didn't find any of it particularly funny.

The scenes with Peter Stomare (Satan from "Constantine") playing the new age therapist/witchdoctor Highsmith are mildly amusing, and I thoroughly enjoyed ogling Gillian Jacobs who plays Ken's sexy wife Sarah. Other than that, you can shove "Bad Milo" up your ass!