So they'll give this concept one more try,
Paving over the people who died,
And you all have a shot
At predicting the plot.
To the point where you have to ask "why?"
But this time, instead of just gore
And thrills that we've all seen before,
The audience demands
More to fill up the stands,
So they make a huge new dinosaur.
This obvious meta-commentary
Is also supposed to be scary.
But with the same plot for us
As III's Spinosaurus,
The whole thing just feels a bit airy.
Howard's Claire is put-upon
Efficient, calm, and withdrawn,
Until she gets saddled
By her sister, brain-addled,
With her own set of ill-behaved spawn.
The movie takes a sexist turn,
As Claire's childlessness is spurned.
The brats are most skilled
At almost getting killed,
And yet she has something to learn.
The younger kid, despite my rage,
Recalls my own dinosaur stage.
And in spite of his blunder,
His huge sense of wonder
Neatly mirrors my own at that age.
But then, I continue to whinge
About the Chris Pratt cliche binge.
He's perfect and right,
An uber-macho knight,
And the "alpha" line made me cringe.
The plot tries to start, on a whiz,
A romance that lacks any fizz.
It just undermines
To have so many lines
About how far below him she is.
But it's all an ill-conceived blend.
One scene has a person contend
That "nature vs. tech"
Is a whole bunch of dreck,
Which the film's forgotten by the end.
And then we're given Claire's P.A.
Who we don't see for most of the day,
And whose return is soured
When she is devoured
In an oddly unpleasant way.
So many plot points that it's hittin'
With resolutions it's omittin'.
Which makes sense, once you glean
Each CG set-piece scene
Was started before it was written.
It has many flaws to redress,
But it's not smart enough to transgress.
The problem is not
Any evil it's got,
But that the whole thing is a mess.
Mila Kunis as Jupiter Jones
Learns she is the latest of clones
Of a wealthy space-queen
With resources to glean
From a number of planet'ry zones.
She swiftly gets caught in the plan
Of a Borgia-esque Jovian clan.
So she goes on the run
Helped by a hired gun
Who is made up of half-wolf, half-man.
She meets with a jaded Sean Bean,
Who says how it all was foreseen.
Then she's nearly enslaved
And thus has to be saved
Just about every alternate scene.
She travels to planets and then
Meets the resident women and men.
Each one on her route
Starts to get fleshing-out,
But then we never see them again.
For some reason, she becomes smitten
With the wolf, and hopes she'll not be bitten,
She gets rescued, coerced,
And it's all interspersed
With some of the worst jokes ever written.
We run through the Campbell inventory,
A hero blessed with unsung glory.
It sets in for the haul,
But refusing the call
Takes up about half the damn story.
The rest is just different degrees
And various flavors of cheese,
It sets us all snoozing
As the movie starts musing
On the noble nature of bees.
Author's note: yes, there is a lengthy monologue in the movie about how honest and astute bees are. I did not just make that up for the rhyme. I honestly sort of wish I had.
Eddie Redmayne's the villain to thwart
As he strives to betray and extort,
But every expression
Is just an impression
Of Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort.
The structure's all over the place,
As Jupe travels all around space
Meeting each cosmic power
For a fourth of an hour,
Then abruptly rejoining the chase.
The action scenes are hardly brief,
And add little to the story's beef,
Though given the sum
Of the film's tedium,
The dogfights are a welcome relief.
But for all its Star-Warsian pretense,
The movie is not deep, just dense.
You can say that the prequels
Were never quite equals,
But even Episode I made more sense.
