Jurassic Park

Fly, You Fools!

16/08/25

Pleasance Courtyard (Beyond), Edinburgh

New York-based theatre company Recent Cutbacks specialise in producing no-budget parodies of epic films. Last year, their Hold Onto Your Butts (an unlicensed version of Jurassic Park) gave us plenty of cheap laughs and, as predicted in our review, they’ve returned with that show – and also a companion piece, Fly, You Fools!, their interpretation of Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Rings.

Three performers – Nick Abeel, Kyle Schafer and Regan Sims – team up with Foley artist Kelly Robinson, plus a collection of props that look like they’ve been salvaged from the back of a wardrobe, and do their damnedest to perform a version of the movie for a packed crowd at the Pleasance.

I have to confess to being a fan of the Rings trilogy, which for three years of my life were a birthday go-to for me and my daughter – but I can’t deny that they have more than their fair share of pomposity and illogical happenings, which makes them fair game for a debunk. Clearly today’s audience is in full agreement. There’s raucous laughter as the performers switch from character to character and height to height, doing their level best to depict Frodo and his crew making their way to Mordor – or as they prefer to say it, Morrrrrrdddddoooooor.

And yes, that most pertinent of questions does get a mention: why didn’t they just fly there there on the back of an eagle and save themselves a lot of hassle?

The story was developed by Matt Zambrano and directed by Kristen McCarthy Parker. It’s a fun way to spend an hour but is it as strong as HOYB? For my money, Fly, You Fools! doesn’t er… land quite as effectively as its predecessor – a lengthy sequence featuring crap shadow theatre slows down the pace somewhat – but there are close to three hundred people at Beyond who appear to be having the time of their lives.

Mission accomplished. (Now there’s a franchise they might have some fun with…)

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Jurassic World Rebirth

17/07/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Since its release in 1993, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park has suffered from a bad case of recurring sequelitus – Jurassic Park Parts 2 and 3, Jurassic World and its three increasingly dodgily-titled offspring, not to mention knockoff fodder like Jurassic Shark and Jurassic Whoops I Can’t Think What to Call This. (Okay, so I made the last one up, but you get the idea.)

When this latest instalment was announced, I was initially reluctant to go and see it but, as soon as I heard that it was to be helmed by Gareth Edwards, my interest was piqued. Edwards’ 2023 sci-fi movie The Creator was one of our choices for the best films of that year – a completely original concept and, moreover, a film that looked like it cost millions of dollars more than it actually did. Perhaps inevitably, it fared badly at the box office. This may explain why Edwards decided to throw his hat into the ring for the latest Jurassic spin-off, authored by the franchise’s original writer, David Koepp. Well, it’s sure to have a good storyline, right?

It’s thirty-odd years after the events of the first film and, it seems, dinosaurs have fallen out of favour with the general public. Stegosaurs? Been there, done that. Consequently, dinosaur theme parks are now closing around the world because everyone’s bored with watching tyrannosaurs and allosaurs. Now these mighty critters only exist in remote tropical jungles on the equator, where people are warned never to venture. But shady entrepreneur Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) still thinks there’s potential gold in them there beasts. He has devised a plan to extract blood from three different types of dinosaur in order to produce a serum that will dramatically reduce the rates of heart disease around the world… yes, really. And the problem is the serum must be extracted while the creatures are still alive. Er… right. As you might guess from his malignant name, Krebs is not just doing this because he’s a nice guy, but because he’s expecting to make big bucks from the pharmaceutical industry.

He recruits special operative Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to head up the operation, ably assisted by her former military chum, Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali). Also in the team is dinosaur expert, Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) – well, you have to have somebody who knows a bit about dinosaurs, don’t you? And there’s a bunch of assistants, who may as well have numbers on their foreheads designating the order in which they will be turned into dino-dinner. The motley crew set sail for a remote island that’s home to the three species they’re looking for.

On the way there, they rescue a party of four Mexican holidaymakers, out for an ill-advised leisure cruise through reptile-infested waters, their reasoning being that, well, there’s hardly any amphibious dinos left, so what are the chances of being attacked? One of the crew is a cute little girl called Isabella (Audrina Miranda) because, of course, there has to be a wide-eyed youngster for the audience to care about.

To give Edwards his due, there are three genuinely exciting set pieces here that actually have me on the edge of my seat as they unfold – for some reason, the water-bound sections are particularly effective. Once again, Edwards manages to bring in the film on a much lower budget than its predecessors, though it’s still in the region of 180 million dollars, which is nobody’s idea of cheap and cheerful.

But the two main problems here are: A – that eyebrow-raising storyline, which seems to revel in making itself increasingly unbelievable as it goes along; and B – the fact that the human characters feel under-developed, somehow less convincing than the CGI beasts that surround them. It’s ironic to see high-calibre actors like Johansson and Ali desperately trying to emote in the midst of all the giant lizard action, but no doubt they were handsomely paid for their efforts, so good luck to them. There are several inevitable visual references to the original film (viewers may as well be issued with a list to tick off). I prefer the delightful little tribute to stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen, with a brief clip from The Valley of Gwangi showing on a random TV screen.

If everything were been up to the standard of those mighty set pieces, I’d be much happier with the film, but what do I know? Based upon it’s opening week, it looks as though this is going to make a handsome profit, so inevitably, there are sure to be more titles to follow.

Jurassic World Afterbirth? Hmm. Maybe not.

3. 4 stars

Philip Caveney

Hold On to Your Butts

15/08/24

Pleasance Forth, Edinburgh

At the Pleasance Forth, a huge crowd of film fans has eagerly assembled for Hold Onto Your Butts. The raison d’etre of this New York-based outfit, making its debut at the Fringe, is to take a big-budget movie – you know the kind of thing, epic scale, massive special effects – and replicate it. They do this pretty much scene-for-scene, using a series of cheap-as-chips props to capture every detail. So for instance, a spinning umbrella becomes the rotor blades of a helicopter. Got it? Good.

Today we’re being treated to their version of Jurassic Park, though (presumably for legal reasons) the title is never mentioned. A grand cast of two performers (Natalie Rich and Matt Zambrano) and one foley artist (Kelly Robinson) gleefully launch themselves headlong into the action. The actors mine the film for its weaknesses, having fun with Ian Malcolm’s proclivity for pregnant pauses, John Hammond’s habit of fitting in lavish meals at inopportune moments, and the seeming inability of the adults in the cast to realise that they are repeatedly plunging the two kids in the story into harm’s way.

And then of course there are the dinosaurs. It’s amazing what can be achieved with a bike helmet and a traffic cone…

This is great fun, but I should probably point out that anyone with little or no knowledge of the original film will be somewhat bewildered by what’s happening onstage. Fans of Jurassic Park – and there are many – will have a whale of a time. Judging by the gales of laughter filling the room, that’s a sizeable part of the audience.

Fast, funny and irreverent, Hold On To Your Butts has all the makings of a monster hit and I fully expect it to become a regular fixture at the Fringe. We’ll see how that one er… evolves.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Ready Player One

31/03/18

If ever there was a man to qualify as ‘World’s Greatest Living Film Director,’ Steven Spielberg would surely be a strong contender for the title. Few movie makers have his longevity – his first cinematic release, Duel, was released in 1971. Even fewer can boast his extensive range. Here is a man who is happy to film pure popcorn crowd pleasers like Raiders of the Lost Ark or Jurassic Park, but who is equally at home helming powerful dramas of the ilk of Munich or Schindler’s List. Recently the recipient of Empire Magazine’s ‘Legend of Our Lifetime’ Award, it’s hardly surprising that few people have bothered to put up voices of dissent. He really is that accomplished. With his latest release, he takes on the world of virtual reality gaming and it would have been so easy to come a cropper here, an older man desperately trying to be ‘down with the kids.’ But, as ever, Spielberg passes his self-appointed test with flying colours.

Set in the year 2045, the story is set in a dystopian vision of America (has there ever been an optimistic cinematic view of its future, I wonder?). Most of the population is addicted to virtual gaming and, like our hero, Wade (Tye Sheridan), spend nearly all of their leisure hours in a pixellated environment called The Oasis. Wade competes there using his more handsome avatar, Parzival, and he’s not just playing to escape from the drudgery of his life, oh no. He’s in search of three special keys, hidden there by the Oasis’s late creator, Halliday (Mark Rylance). The finder of those keys will inherit his world and the billions of dollars it generates in revenue.

Whilst in the Oasis, Wade regularly interacts with the avatars of gamer friends who he has never actually met in real life. Then he meets a new one, Art3emis (Olivia Cooke), who, he soon realises, is somebody he really would like to know better. Their introduction – during a riotous vehicle chase – sets the tone for the story that follows and makes The Fast and the Furious look like a Sunday drive in the suburbs. In the midst of all the excitement, Wade is blissfully unaware that he has a major adversary in the real world. Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) is a ruthless businessman, intent on securing the Oasis for himself and ready to go to any lengths to eliminate his competitors.

In terms of plot, that’s pretty much all you need to know. Suffice to say that Spielberg and his team have concocted a dazzling, fast-paced riot of sound and fury, with visual references to so many of Spielberg’s movie influences (plus several images from his own films) that you will be constantly trying to spot them all. Some are obvious, and actually contribute to the story, while others are onscreen for the briefest of glimpses. If ever a film demanded repeat viewings, this is the one – if only to allow the geeks in the audience to tick the various references off their list. If I may be allowed to single out one particular  sequence for praise, it’s the extended homage to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

Okay, so this is definitely one to go on the ‘popcorn’ side of Spielberg’s resumé, but oh my goodness, what succulent popcorn it is! After the relatively lacklustre BFG, and the rather straight laced The Post, this puts him back where he belongs, as the foremost purveyor of cinematic wonder. Where will he go next? Well, that’s anybody’s guess, but I would venture to suggest that, close to fifty years since his low budget debut, Spielberg’s well seems a long way from running dry.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney