“Jurassic World: Rebirth” - More like afterbirth.

Does anyone get excited for the birth of their fourth child? Or seventh? Or is it more like that feeling you get when you fit piece number two thousand in that last hole in the jigsaw puzzle? You know what I’m talking about. You were excited when you dumped the pieces out of the box and found all of the edges. You were still pretty into it as you assembled the major features of the picture. But when all was left was the monotonous portions of sky and water, you gritted your teeth and slowly, methodically tried to fit every single remaining piece into every single remaining opening, silently cussing every time a piece didn’t fit. As that last piece settled in, you felt relief at finishing it mixed with the thought “I’m never doing a puzzle again.” Is this still an analogy to having kids? You decide. Bet you’re wondering how many kids I have, aren’t you?

That’s also the entirety of the Jurassic Park/World franchise. Jurassic Park was new and exciting and awesome. Every movie after that has been increasingly disappointing to the point where you really have to question your sanity for continuing to go back for more. Heck, you’ll even lie to yourself that number four (Jurassic World) was better than most. Am I still actually talking about kids? You know you’re thinking it.

Jurassic World: Rebirth is what happens when you’ve run out of ideas. Scratch that, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is what happens when you run out of ideas. Rebirth is what happens when you have a midlife crisis and don’t care that you ran out of birth control.

Despite its title implying a reboot of the franchise, Rebirth is just another sequel in the franchise. To be fair, it does kinda-sorta reboot in that it’s five years later and Earth’s climate has killed the vast majority of the dinosaurs not living around the equator. The military isn’t trying to weaponize them, nobody is trying to sell them on the black market, and there isn’t a prehistoric locust to be found anywhere. There isn’t even a third attempt to build an amusement park or zoo around them. That leaves pharmaceuticals.

That’s right folks. This time around, dinosaurs are going to cure...checking notes...heart disease? That’s it? Nothing lofty like cancer or Alzheimer’s? And, they’re not even really going to cure it, just treat it so people can live ten to twenty years longer? I guess from a how-do-we-make-as-much-money-as-possible angle, treating heart disease would be rather lucrative. Those GLP-1 medications are making boatloads of money.

If you’re confused, the dinosaurs themselves aren’t literally curing heart disease. Though, that would be an interesting scene - a velociraptor wearing a lab coat and stethoscope walking toward a patient with a syringe. Wasn’t that a Dr. Who episode...?

[Googles for five minutes...]

Anyway...pharmaceutical executive Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) puts together a team to go on a fetch quest to obtain blood samples from three of the largest dinosaurs to ever live. Like all good video games, each dinosaur inhabits a different biome, providing a different setting for each MacGuffin. In this case sea, land, air. Why the largest animals? They lived the longest and had the biggest hearts. Why three different species? Diversity, I guess. And just to make sure you understand how video-game-like this all is, two of the three dinosaurs are the kind that want to eat them. It’s not that the filmmakers couldn’t have made an exciting movie featuring the team hunting for one elusive herbivore or even getting close enough to the land dinosaur (Titanosaurus) after overcoming a bunch of sharp teeth related obstacles. They just chose to go with the most obvious excuse to include harrowing scenes featuring a Mosasaurus (sea) and Quetzalcoatlus (air) - send the team of humans to the carnivores.

The team itself is a by-the-numbers quest team. In addition to the money guy, there’s the wheelman - boat captain Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), the brains - paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), the muscle/dino chow (Ed Skrein, Bechir Sylvain, Philippine Velge), and the team leader - mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson). All this sounds like a perfectly fine summer action blockbuster, right?

Here's where it gets redundant and pointless - a second group of people gets tangled up in the mission. Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is sailing across the ocean with his two daughters Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Isabella (Audrina Miranda) and Teresa’s stoner boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono). After the Mosasaurus capsizes their boat (and inexplicably doesn’t finish the job and eat them), they are rescued by Zora and crew. When they all get to the island, the two groups are separated, and the film jumps back and forth between the fetch quest crew and stupid family drama. And all because there is a clause in the franchise contract (or so I’m told) that requires children be put in peril. Don’t pretend you aren’t rooting for these annoying vestigial screenplay organs to become a dinosaur’s late-night indigestion.

Here's where it gets worse. In a nod back to Jurassic World, Rebirth features more mutant dinosaurs. One is a cross between a raptor and a pterosaur and the other is a cross between a xenomorph and a rancor. No, I’m not mixing my movies. The Distortus Rex (a name I did not make up) looks like if Return of the Jedi and Alien got drunk and, nine months later, the result was a baby no mother could love.

And that just about sums up the movie as a whole. Okay, so maybe that’s a little harsh. Rebirth isn’t the worst movie in the franchise; Jurassic World: Dominion exists. And Rebirth does have a few really fun action sequences, including our old friend the T-Rex. And, and, Johansson, Ali, Bailey, and Friend give pretty good performances when they easily could have phoned them in and nobody would have noticed or cared. But between the unnecessary Delgado family, the insipid and lazy mutant dinos, the film consisting largely of rehashing stuff from its preceding films, and two Titanosaurs getting to second base with each other as the humans watch in awe, Rebirth inspires the same question as every family with several children - are we done yet?

Rating: Ask for seventeen dollars back and call your doctor if you experience blurred vision, bleeding from the ears, involuntary eye-rolls, memory loss, a severe drop in IQ, or a strong desire to throw Junior Mints at people who unironically clap at the end of this movie.

“Wicked” - A Discovery of Witches.

I’m not a big fan of origin stories featuring villains. They always start out with the villain being good and, later, either being misunderstood - as Maleficent is in Maleficent, or completely unconvincing in their turn towards evil - as Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels. Sometimes, villains are just evil and always were evil. No explanation needed. Wicked is the story of how the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz came to be so wicked.

Going into Wicked, I was a little worried about the two hour and forty-minute run time...and this was just part one. You read that correctly. I’ve read the book (by Gregory Maguire) and seen the stage play and I don’t remember either of them being particularly enthralling. They’re not Dune.

Perhaps the biggest thing Wicked gets right is it’s the origin story of not one, but two witches. Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo) is the green Technicolor witch eventually melted by Dorothy, but Elphaba shares Wicked’s story with the bubble driving Glinda the Good Witch of the North (Ariana Grande). Excuse me - Galinda Upland, emphasis on the Ga- as lectured by Galinda to history professor and talking goat Doctor Dillamond (Peter Dinklage). Galinda is wicked in a Mean Girls way, caring only about clothes, being popular, and landing the hot guy, Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey). Forced to room with Elphaba, Galinda sets about making Elphaba’s life miserable in the many petty, but very mean ways that bitchy, self-absorbed high school girls always resort to in movies.

The cleverness of the story is it asks the viewer/reader to think twice about who is actually the wicked one. While the main focus is on the dual witches, we also have to consider a few other characters’ level of wickedness. Elphaba’s father and governor of Munchkinland (Andy Nyman) openly despises Elphaba, even at her moment of birth. Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) is the Dean of Sorcery at Shiz University (where Galinda and Elphaba attend school) and is hoping to take advantage of Elphaba’s magical talents for her own ambitions. And we can’t forget Oz’s famous charlatan, the, ahem...Wonderful...Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum). In order to continue to stay in power, the wizard needs a true sorcerer to read a magical book called the Grimmerie. The title of wicked is up for grabs and, so far, Elphaba is bringing up the rear.

The broader story is one that will make a lot of people squirm in their seats - the authoritarian takeover of a country through lies, greed, manipulation, and bigotry. All of that will come to a head in Wicked Part 2 (due November 2025) but is very visible in part one, as well. Having green skin sets Elphaba apart from everyone else and the discrimination comes from all directions. Only two other people treat Elphaba as simply a person and both can relate. Elphaba’s sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode), who is paraplegic, and Doctor Dillamond, who, as I said earlier, is a talking goat. When Elphaba learns that there is an effort to cage and mute all talking animals (illustrated by racist graffiti), Elphaba decides to fight for their rights to remain free and is demonized for her efforts. Yes, I’m still describing Wicked, but I know what you’re thinking.

Surprisingly, stretching all of this out over two hours and forty minutes turned out to be a good decision. Another thing I’m not a fan of is musicals, but the long run time allowed the movie to breathe in between song numbers without having to cut any of the songs from the original stage musical. My twelve-year-old son was particularly worried about being bored by a long musical, but we both agreed that the movie never felt slow and didn’t have too much musical. It helps that Erivo and Grande are both exceptional singers and that everything in the movie - from the costuming, to the set design and production, to the CGI, to the actors - are very visually pleasing.

It's been more than a decade since I read the book and attended the musical and it left such little impression on me that I forgot nearly everything I read and saw. Not only did the movie bring it all back, but it did it so well that I enjoyed it much more this time around. While I went into the film wary of many things, I’m now looking forward to Part 2. It’s still no Dune though.

Rating: Don’t ask for any of your money back because even a twelve-year-old boy thinks it’s worth it.