I was actually pleasantly surprised by this film. Based off of the horrible experiences of "Fallen Kingdom" and "Dominion", I was not expecting much which is why I waited to rent it.
Was there bad campy dialogue? Yes.
Were there questionable plot choices and logic? Of course.
Did the movie make me care about the characters? Surprisingly yes, for the most part.
Firstly, I liked that the writers got through the simple premise fairly quickly and by the 25 minute mark, we were on the boat ready for the adventure on the way to the island. The movie took a beat to have a scene with Scarlett Johansson's character and Mahershala Ali's character which I think was important in making us care about the characters. I would have preferred more show than tell, but I think people want to see the dinosaurs ASAP so any potential flashbacks would have gotten in the way.
Then they shifted to this random family who were also at sea, and it was interesting how they were pulled into the plot and then once they got to the island, the writers gave us two different branching stories. I got some "Kong Skull Island" vibes from the one crew and I think the writers used the other crew to mirror Alan Grant's journey across the island from the first "Jurassic Park" film. Alan Grant does get a quick name drop by the scientist character played by Jonathan Bailey who I didn't know until my wife mentioned was the same actor in Wicked. I think he did a great job and I was impressed by his handling of those two very different roles.
I think this movie had a good mix of dread, action, and decent pacing. With the baby Triceratops, I was semi expecting for the mom to pop in at some point and save the day, but that didn't happen so good for the movie to keep the audience on their toes for a little bit.
Without spoiling, there was a character that did something that made me well up a bit, so good job to the writers for pulling that off. I was surprised that I would care about any of these new characters that much.
In the end, it's definitely worth a rent / watch. I'd give it a 6.5/10.
