Jurassic Finale

Jurassic World Dominion

Director: Colin Trevorrow 

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Isabella Sermon, BD Wong, Campbell Scott

Released: June 10, 2022

Disclaimer: I apologize if I've misspelled any dinosaur names in this review; why do they have to have the most difficult, hard to spell names? 

This  movie has a feeling of finality to it, but I have a feeling that this won't be the last Jurassic Park/World movie we'll see. 

Boy, there are sure a lot of characters in this movie. There's characters from the first two Jurassic World movies, characters from the original Jurassic Park, new characters that make their debut in this movie, and I'm not even counting the dinosaurs! And pretty much nobody dies except for the bad guys. It's almost like the dinosaurs know who not to attack and eat. 

This movie has its fun moments and cool new dinosaurs, but overall, it just felt a little disappointing. I think nothing will ever capture the magic that was the original 1993 Jurassic Park, but I will admit to having fun watching Jurassic World, too. Dominion takes place in real time, four years after the events of Fallen Kingdom, which I barely remembered anything that happened. Luckily I could read my review of it to refresh my memory. 

Basically, after the events of that movie, all the dinosaurs are pretty much roaming the Earth freely, living among all of us. Never have I been so glad that this movie is fiction! We get a fictional news show that starts the movie by telling the audience, "To combat the growing threat of illegal poachers, the U.S. Congress awarded sole collection rights to the global giant Biosyn Genetics." This will be our evil cooperation and the CEO is our "bad guy". The CEO just so happens to be Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), the character that was in the first movie. Honestly, I never would have even realized that if it wasn't pointed out to me on a couple movie review podcasts I listened to. He says they are dedicated to the idea that "dinosaurs can teach us more about ourselves" and hopes to study the dinosaurs' "ancient immune systems for unique pharmaceutical properties." He has created a sanctuary for the dinosaurs in the Dolomite Mountains, located in northeast Italy. The decision to put the dinosaurs in this location is baffling. Wouldn't it make more sense to put them on an island? Who's to say they're not just going to cross over into Switzerland or Austria or other European countries? Hell, I'm surprised a pterodactyl didn't fly all the way to Paris and knock over the Eiffel Tower with its massive wing span. Why not just relocate the five million people that reside in New Zealand to Australia (or wherever they want to go) and put the dinosaurs there? No chance of dinosaurs relocating to neighboring countries (well, the flying ones might be able to...). 

Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) are still a couple, living together in a shack in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains where they are the "parents" of Maisie (Isabella Sermon), the clone girl from the previous movie. I put parents in quotes cuz I'm quite sure they never legally adopted her. She's been living with them for the past four years and they're protecting her because they know there are bad people out there looking for her. This poor girl; having to go from that mansion to this little shack. I bet her room in the mansion was twice as big as the shack she's living in now! No wonder she's so resentful towards them. They have a very strict rule about her not crossing the bridge, but of course she does. 

Blue, the not-quite-domesitcated velociraptor has a baby. (And yes, it is actually quite cute seeing the two of them frolicking in the mountain wood together. We see Blue teaching her offspring how to hunt and you think Baby Blue is going to pounce on a rabbit, but then a wolf hunts down the rabbit and then Baby Blue ambushes the wolf, which is much bigger than her, mind you). I was super confused because Blue and Baby Blue (Maisie names the baby "Beta", but Baby Blue is so much better, plus it makes me think of Breaking Bad, heh) are literally living in Owen's back/front yard and he, Claire, and Maisie seemed to have no idea that she was even there. 

It's Maisie who comes across the baby raptor first when she's outside, eating a piece of toast. She holds out the piece of toast, thinking this meat-eating animal wants some carbs and the little raptor snatches it out of her hands. I was seriously worried Maisie was going to lose a hand there. Then Mama Blue shows up, and boy, she's not happy. Luckily Owen shows up (he always seems to show up at the right time; I'm guessing he was viewing this through the windows of his cabin) and puts his hand up to Blue and that seems to be some universal sign to dinosaurs so they don't eat you. Oh, if only Gennaro, Muldoon, Arnold, and Nedry had known about that in Jurassic Park! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know - Owen trained Blue and is able to "control" her, but he will do this same tactic with two other (much larger) carnivores he comes across and while they don't run off like Blue and her baby do, they do pause so he's able to escape before they have him as an afternoon snack. Owen tells Maisie to go inside because he wants to go searching for Blue's nest. I know he's the Raptor Whisperer, but is that really a good idea? 

Minions working for the movie's bad guy have tracked down Maisie and they kidnap both her and Baby Blue. Owen and Claire are able to get intel that they're being taken to Malta, and we'll come back to them later.

Meanwhile, in West Texas, a huge swarm of ginormous locusts (seriously, they're the size of my cat ::::shudder:::) take out a huge field. One is captured under a bucket and everybody's favorite paleobotonist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is there to inspect it. She brings the caged locust to Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and I thought this was the first time we see them in a scene together since Jurassic Park, but they actually had a scene together in JP3. Now, I remember them both being in that movie, but I forgot they actually have a scene together. Also, I had thought both The Lost World and JP3 was erased from the Jurassic World storyline, but this storyline has me rethinking that. I'm not sure if I read somewhere that the second and third JP movies were erased from the canon or I just made that up myself. But here, in this movie, Ellie tells Alan she got divorced and mentions her kids are now in college. Of course, it's in JP3 where we find out she got married and had two kids. I kinda forgot that her and Dr. Grant were romantically involved in the first movie; they acted more like colleagues than a couple. 

Ellie tells him swarms of the locusts are "decimating crops" and they "started as a few hundred, but could be millions by the end of the summer." Um, from I saw on screen, it looks like they're already in the millions! At the rate the locusts are going, there will be no grain to feed chickens or cattle and "the entire food chain would collapse." None of the crops they're eating are Biosyn seed and Ellie is not shocked that they would "want to control the world's food supply." She wants to go to their facility and get DNA from one of their locust and needs Alan to come with her as a witness. She tells him she got an invite from their "in-house philosopher", Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and he told Ellie there are things there she'd want to see. 

Okay, now back to Owen and Claire. Maisie and Baby Blue have been kidnapped and Blue, who was knocked down an incline, is snarling at Owen who stands her down and tells her they're going to get her baby back, like the dinosaur can understand English. She snaps at him a few more times, then turns and runs back in the woods. 

Like I mentioned, Owen and Claire get intel from the dude who was in Fallen Kingdom that there's going to be a "cash for cargo" exchange in Malta the next day. Apparently there's a black market for dinosaurs in this tiny island country. Who knew. They have people who were recruited by the CIA after the park closed down and Barry (who was in Jurassic World) will be able to help them. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well enough, but honestly, it doesn't really matter. The scene in Malta is just a fun thrill ride, but doesn't really add anything to the plot, besides the fact they find out they're taking Maisie to the Biosyn lab near the Dolomites in Italy. Also, I'm guessing they chose this particular location to house the dinosaurs because they got filming rights in Malta and that was too cool of a place to pass up to film (and it IS cool), so they just made Italy as the permanent home for the dinosaurs. Still think New Zealand would have made much more sense! 

A cargo pilot, Kayla, who is paid to transport dinosaurs to Biosyn, sees Maisie who is transported over to some evil, sophisticated  European woman named Santos. Kayla just so happens to be in the bathroom of some seedy underground lair where dino fights and illegal sales of dinos occur as the same time as Claire who shows her a picture of Maisie and asks if she's seen her. Kayla just replies she can't get involved and walks away. 

Santos finds out that Maisie's "parents" are in town, so she unleashes these atrociraptors (pretty much the same thing as a velociraptor) who are trained to kill people when they see a laser point at them. Um, do raptors really need to be told who to kill? Owen and Claire are separately being chased by these raptors and this is when Owen finds himself between these two big dinosaurs (they were bigger than a raptor, but smaller than a T-rex) and is able to hold his hands up long enough to give them pause, so he can keep running without getting eaten. The fact that both Claire are Owen are outrunning these super fast dinosaurs is a bit absurd. But soon, Owen gets on a motorbike and Claire, after jumping out a window, lands in a truck that just so happens to be driven by Kayla, so she drives Claire to her cargo plane to take her to Biosyn (Claire found out that's where Maisie is being taken). 

Kayla is about to start the plane, but here comes Owen, on his motorbike, being chased by a raptor. He manages to steer into the back of the plane, with the raptor right on his tail. The bike slides back, knocking the raptor into the water below them. Claire manages to hang onto a strap and grabs Owen before he can also slide down to the open door.  

They are not given clearance to land because the bad guys know Maisie's "parents" are on board. Their ADS (aerial deterrent system) is shut off. Otherwise, when it's turned on, it keeps the airborne life away. Which is a good thing considering there are some giant-ass prehistoric birds flying around like the quetzalocatus. (I swear, where do they come up with these names? Why not just call it what it is - big ass flying dinosaur bird.) It's the same length as the plane which we see as it soars over them, then uses it beak to scrape the top of the plane and smash the front window and take out a couple engines. I did laugh when Kayla tells them what it is and adds, "Late Cretaceous, should have stayed there." 

Kayla only has one ejection seat and it's the one Claire is sitting in, seated behind the pilot's seat. (You would think the pilot seat would have the capacity to be ejected....duh.) Claire is given instructions by Owen to eject and to use the lever if the parachute doesn't come out automatically. He thinks Claire will have the best chance to find Maisie. Claire ejects her seat and a parachute comes out, but is immediately attacked by all the pterodactyls, so she pulls the lever for the extra parachute and lands in a tree. Owen and Kayla crash into a frozen lake. Gee, I wondered if they survived? Well, come back later and find out, but let's see what Alan and Ellie are up to. 

They're on a plane flying to the Biosyn lab with Ramsay Cole who is head of communications. We get some exposition as he tells them that Biosyn bought this land in the '90s for the amber deposits (we all know amber is important to the Jurassic storyline!) and have managed to turn it into a "safe haven for about twenty displaced species". They have the first generation dinos from Isla Sorna, but also have most of the ones from Isla Nublar. He also mentions it took them three years to capture the T-rex. Their laboratory is built completely underfund and if they need to herd the dinosaurs to a specific location, they can send "electric signals" with neuro-implants to their brains. Alan and Ellie think this is cruel, that it sounds like they are shocking them. Ramsay asks them, "Do you know how much voltage was in the electric fences at Jurassic Park?" and Grant looks at him like, Duh, yes, of course I do. Nice little callback to the original movie there (and we'll get a few more of those instances). 

I think this is the first movie since the original where we see Grant, Saddler, and Malcolm all together. While Alan and Ellie are ordering coffee, Ian takes Ellie aside and whispers to her that locusts are part of a project called Hexapod Allies and that she is correct about their intent. He tells her where they keep the giant bugs downstairs and hands her an electronic bracelet that will get them through the secured doors. 

Ramsay asks Alan and Ellie if they would like to tour the facilities by themselves, which seems odd that they would just let the two of them wander off on their own, but it will make sense a little later. He tells them he'll meet them at a certain location in 30 minutes and makes a big show of telling them which elevators NOT to use and if they do, where it will lead them. Why not just say, "Don't use those elevators, they go to a restricted area?" But again, we'll learn later why he's telling them all this. Oh, alright, I might as well just tell you now: Ramsay is on their side and wants them to steal the DNA of the locust so he's pretty much letting them do it and how to do it, but at this point Ellie and Alan (or the audience) don't know this yet. 

So while they're sneaking into the locust area, we see Maisie and a caged Baby Blue are in a room with Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong). Henry tells her they needed Baby Blue to help them study her. I was so confused how Blue had a baby, but Henry explains it by saying when they created her, they gave her monitor lizard DNA and they can produce without a mate. Blue and Baby Blue are genetically identical, which is what they have in common with Maisie and Charlotte. If you remember, Charlotte was the daughter of Charles Lockwood, the guy who was Hammond's partner....they're pretty much characters they retconned into this franchise. Maisie is the clone of Charlotte, who died 13 years ago. They mention she had a genetic disease, which I assumed was why she died, but reading over my Fallen Kingdom review, I mentioned she died in a car crash. Oh, hell, I don't know. 

Maisie (and the audience) are given a bombshell when she (and we) learn that it was not her grandfather who created her, but rather Charlotte herself. In a video Maisie watches from 2007, she sees that Charlotte is pregnant with her. Okay, it seems very narcissitic to have a baby who is an exact replica of yourself (not to mention, super boring and very weird...who wants a carbon copy of themselves?) But Charlotte is touted as some super intelligent scientist who's the first person to ever do this (well, duh) and people act like she's the most brilliant being to walk this earth. I swear they said she died of the genetic disease she had, which is why she changed every cell in Maisie's body so she wouldn't have it. (God, that must have been a bitch to change every single cell in a human body!) 

Henry tells Maisie that he wants to study her and Baby Blue's DNA; that he could "fix a terrible mistake he's made" (meaning the locust). While Henry is chatting with Dodgson (who is not happy that Henry was showing Maisie videos of Charlotte), Maisie gets up and lets Baby Blue out of her cage. How was she able to do that? Because Henry just left his security bracelet lying on a table in plain sight. Great job, Henry. Unless he did that on purpose because he wanted her to release the baby dino! Dodgson sees them escaping and sounds the alarm. This causes the locusts to go crazy and fly all over the place just as Ellie has extracted the DNA. She and Alan are trying to get out, but their security bracelet has fallen. Maisie has sauntered over to the area where they're in and hears them screaming. They manage to get out and Maisie sees them and knows who they are and that they can be trusted because they do not work for Biosyn. While they're all trying to escape, Ramsay finds them. Remember, I already told you that he's on their side and wanted them to get the DNA sample. He's the one who told Ian about Hexagon Allies. He also tells them something we already know: that Biosyn's responsible for the locust epidemic. I thought for sure he was lying and was only trying to pretend he was on their side and we were going to find out he was with Dodgson all along, but nope, he's actually a good guy and does help them along the way. That's why I already told you he was on their side earlier. He tells them to get on a pod that will take them straight to an airfield where there will be a plane ready to fly. 

Okay, let's get back to our other characters and see what's going on with them. Are they all still alive? Of course they are! For now...(no, just kidding...they'll remain alive through the entire movie. None of our heroes will die in this movie). 

Claire is still strapped in her airplane chair, dangling in a high tree. A big-ass dinosaurs that looks like a bird  is right next to her. I had to look this up and it's a Therizinosaurus. It has these long talons and appear to be blind. Even though it's a herbivore (what? with those sharp talons?), even the herbivore dinosaurs are dangerous in this movie, so when Claire removes her seatbelt and falls to the ground, she crawls to the water and stays underwater for as long as she can so I guess the dino can't smell her? But if it's a herbivore, why would it want to eat her? I guess it would still want to kill her if it felt threatened in its territory. When she was underwater, I was hoping there weren't any other dinos or crocs living in that swamp! When she emerges from the water, she goes to a spot where she can see the smoke from the crashed plane. She doesn't know it yet, but Owen and Kayla have (somehow) survived. They hop out of a panel that's on top of the plane and start their trek across the frozen pond, being careful as the ice isn't exactly solid. They do start to run when they see some "weird chicken feather thing" (heh, that's what I wrote in my notes) coming after them. This is a pyroraptor. I know there's scientific proof that dinosaurs had feathers, but it just makes them look so silly! Why couldn't they have just explained they left the feather DNA out of the dinosaurs. So this guy comes after them and it jumps into the water, gliding under the ice and pops up in front of them where the ice has cracked. This is when Owen and Kayla start running. I'm super impressed she can run in her wedge boots on ice. Though I guess when a scary feathered dinosaur is chasing you... Owen falls into the water and the pyroraptor dives after him and this is a super fast swimming dinosaur, but yet Kayla manages to pull Owen out of the water in time. They are still laying on the ice when the dino pops out and he still can't get one of them when the humans are just laying there, vulnerable on the ice. Owen and Kayla get up on a bridge/platform and run towards a pulley/elevator system that they just manage to close as the pyroraptor is just about to get them. This is a clear call back to the first movie when Lex is in the kitchen cabinet and pulls the door shut on the veliceoprator. (And re-reading my Fallen Kingdom, Maisie gets away from the Indoraptor in a similar situation). 

In the elevator, Kayla mentions she has the tracker so they can find Claire and asks Owen, "You really love her, huh?" to which Owen replies, "Yeah." It gave me a chuckle when Kayla replies with, "I get it. I like redheads, too." This reminded me of when I first saw the previews for Jurassic World and just assumed the redhead was Jessica Chastain, not Bryce Dallas Howard. 

As they are in the forest (which looks more like a jungle), looking for the chair (do they really think Claire would still be in it?), we meet another new dinosaur. After they hide from a T-rex who comes across a dead deer, another big dino comes along. Owen thinks it's an Allosaurus, but Kayla tells him it's a Giganotasaurus, which, according to her, is the "largest known terrestrial carnivore." Thank God I'm not a paleontologist cuz I don't know how I would remember all these ridiculous names! (I also suspect I wouldn't enjoy the Jurassic movies if I were one!)

It seems like with each Jurassic movie, they need to have a dinosaur that's bigger and badder than the T-rex, who was pretty prominent in the first two movies, but then after that, it sort of fades into the background. We had the Spinosaurus in JP3, then the manmade Indominus Rex and Indoraptor in the first two Jurassic World movies, and now the Giganotasaurus, which, I have to say, doesn't really make that much of an impact in the movie, which is a bit disappointing. It doesn't even kill anyone, good or bad. The T-Rex and Giga fight, for like, ten seconds, before the T-Rex goes away. One of the humans comments, "You put two apex predators in one valley, pretty soon there's only gonna be one." Foreshadowing, perhaps? Yes, yes it is.  

When Dodgson discovers that Grant and Saddler have take the locust DNA, he stops the pod and they find themselves in the middle of the old amber mines where they discover that many medium size carnivores called Dimetrodons reside. They run to an exit, but it's caged off and they need a passcode to get out. At this point, Malcolm is there, on the other side of the cage and doesn't seem to be fazed or worried. You see, Ramsay had shown Malcolm (who was fired by Dodgson who suspected him of letting his friends steal locust DNA..not exactly sure what his "job" there was) how to get the cave to where his friends are. You would think Ramsay would know about the passcode and perhaps have told Malcolm what the code is, but no, he did not. WTF? So why is Malcolm so calm while cracking jokes and randomly putting in any four digit code? (He tries Miles Davis's birthday). I have no idea. I guess he knows he's in a movie where none of the good guys will die. He doesn't know the code and there's only so much time that his two friends and a fourteen-year-old girl can hold off the hungry prehistoric carnivores. Luckily, Ramsay is seeing this on the video screen and he is able to access the code from where he is so he types the right one in just as Malcolm types in a random one and Malcolm thinks he got it which is kinda funny. 

Now we've met a bunch of new dinosaurs that we haven't seen before, but now it's time to get reacquainted with an old friend. This is a dinosaur that we haven't seen (correct me if I'm wrong here) since the first movie. In my notes, I called it the "Newman dinosaur" because I couldn't remember its real name. This is the dinosaur that kills Newman (Nedry, if you never watched Seinfeld), you know the one that has the neck frill and shoots poison at him. It's called a dilophosorous (apparently its real-life counterpart did not have a neck frill, nor shoot poison) and while a hologram of one is seen in Jurassic World, I'm pretty sure we haven't seen one since the very first movie. Claire comes upon about three of them in a separate facility that's built in the trees and you need to take an elevator to get to. While she is waiting for the elevator, she hears a rustle and soon about three dilophosourouses (I know I totally butchered that spelling!) are surrounding her. One even comes inches from her face and shows its frill. She's literally seconds from having poison spat on her, but out of nowhere, we see a hand grab it around its neck and its Owen, come to the rescue, saving someone from being attacked by a dinosaur for the second time in the film. Kayla tasers it and it and its friends whimper away.   

Maisie and the adults are driving in a Jeep when they see that all the locust have escaped the facility and they have been lit on fire. They realize that Dodgson is burning the evidence. Yeah, he's not doing a very good job, because those massive things don't appear to disintegrate; they just fall to the ground with a thud. The locust starts falling on the Jeep, making them tumble down the hill and, of course, they land right in front of Owen, Claire, and Kayla, so Maisie is reunited with her "parents." But uh-oh, here comes the Giga. We do get a funny moment where both Grant and Owen say, "Don't move." (I thought that was only for the T-rex and I thought that theory got debunked!) Of course, they do move and they start climbing a ladder to the facility up high. There's a steel scaffold between the ladder and as Maisie is climbing the ladder, the Giga puts his jaws right over that scaffolding so she's literally between his jaws. She freezes at first, but Kayla, who is already at the top, encourages her that she can do it and while the Giga rips away the scaffolding, Maisie scurries up the rest of the way. 

So now everyone -except Malcolm- is in the treetop facility, but the Giga its still trying to get to them. I mean, he is tall enough to see them! So in a callback to the first movie, Malcolm uses a stick and one of the fiery (dead) locust as a torch to distract the dino. He throws the torch into the Giga's mouth, and after he's shot with a tranquilizer and tasered in the eye by the people in the treetop, he goes away. 

At this point, the alarms have been sounded and all the dinosaurs are en route to the emergency containment because they have been "signaled" to go there. 

Kayla tells the others there's a helicopter on the main complex. All they need to do is turn the ADS back and and they can fly home. They just need to go to the control room on the third floor, which they do, and Claire recognizes the system as the same one they used at the theme park. 

 

We get a small scene of Malcolm asking Owen about training raptors and he seems pretty skeptical about it, much like everybody else, I'm sure. 

As if we didn't already have enough characters with Owen, Claire, Grant, Ellie, Malcolm, Maisie, and Kayla, here comes Ramsay (and in a few more minutes, Henry will join them) who hears Claire say that she's getting something called "Error 99" and he tells her that means there's not enough power and they need to shut down the primary system, which Claire and Ellie go to do. While they're doing that, Kayla goes to get the helicopter and Maisie tells Owen she knows where Baby Blue is so they and Grant go get her. I'm not exactly sure how Maisie knew where Baby Blue was since the little dinosaur could be anywhere, but they find her and Owen shoots her with a tranq, then straps her to his back so it looks like he's wearing a dinosaur backpack. Before this all happens, the original JP characters (rightfully) are skeptical about this and Owen tells then he made a promise he would bring her home and Ian says the exact thing the audience is thinking, "You made a promise to a dinosaur?" I guess even the script knows this is ridiculous. 

In a predictable play, Dodgson is on a pod, getting ready to escape, when it stops after Claire and Ellie have turned off he power and he gets attacked and killed by a pack of dilophosorouses. 

All our heroes are about ready to get on the chopper ("Get on the chopper!"), but here comes Henry. Seriously, there are way too many characters in this movie! Grant sees him and says, "I remember you" and at first, I'm like, How does he remember this man he met once (I believe they only have one scene together) nearly thirty years ago? But then, the more I thought about it, it does make sense that Grant would remember details about that day. You don't forget a day like that! Henry tells them he can fix the "ecological disaster" he caused and if he can understand how Charlotte rewrote Maisie's DNA, he can spread change from one locust to the entire swarm before it's too late. Maisie agrees to this because it's what Charlotte would have wanted. And that's exactly what happens. 

But first, we need to have one last dino fight between the Giga and the T-Rex! We do get an amusing one-second moment where the T-Rex is clomping along and stops in front of a large circular window so we're getting the Jurassic Park logo for a couple of seconds. The dinos start fighting and it looks like the Giga has gotten the T-Rex as she is knocked down. Kayla shoots the flare to distract the Giga away, but it causes the attention of the Therizinosaurous (or, as I wrote, the "weird chicken dino"). Surprise! The T-rex isn't really dead (we know this because we get a close up of her dilated eye, another callback to the first movie) and she gets up, attacking the Giga and pushes it right into the sharp talons of the ugly chicken dino. 

When they get safely back, Alan and Ellie kiss and now they are officially together. They've been trying to make them a thing for the entire movie, but honestly, I don't really care. Like I said, I totally forget they were even a couple in the first movie. 

We find out that Wu has fixed the locust problem and that Biosyn Valley has been "designated a global sanctuary" where the dinosaurs will "live safe from outside world." I hope they have border patrol! 

We do get a cute moment when Owen lets Baby Blue out of her cage and moments later, Blue comes running up and they go scurrying off together, then Blue comes back and give a slight nod to Owen, as though she's thanking him for bringing back her baby and for keeping his promise. It's so ridiculous that it makes me laugh and cry at the same time, just like that scene in The Goonies when Chunk tells Sloth he's going to live with him now.  

While this movie had its fun and exciting moments, I was mostly disappointed with this final (for now)
movie in the Jurassic franchise. There are dinosaurs out in the world living with the rest of the world and while we get a very small portion of that, it's mostly about...locust? What the huh? And it seemed very convenient only bad guys were killed by the dinosaurs. I don't know what the total death count is, but it seems very small. 

Boy Meets Monster

Little Monsters
Director: Richard Greenberg
Cast: Fred Savage, Howie Mandel, Daniel Stern, Ben Savage
Released: August 25, 1989

I know it's been awhile since I last posted, but I'm back with a new review and it's a review of a terrible movie! Yay! Lucky you! Seriously, I don't know which young Fred Savage movie is worse: this or The Wizard. At least The Wizard has the Nintendo nostalgia and the immortal Power Glove scene and another bonus is that it doesn't have the annoying character of Maurice. It's a good thing Fred Savage has The Wonder Years, because he was in some sh*t movies.

This movie shares some similarities with Monsters, Inc., but it's missing the Pixar charm. Actually it lacks any charm. They're both about monsters who enter children's bedroom to scare them. At least in Monster's, Inc. there's a reason why they're scaring the kids (their screams power Monstropolis); in this movie they just do it because they can? Because it's fun? Because they're literal monsters?

The movie opens with twelve-year-old Brian (Fred Savage) who has just moved to Boston with his family. (I had no idea they were in Boston; I had to look it up on the Wikipedia). His little brother, Eric, is played by his real-life brother, Ben Savage, who is not very good in this. But in his defense, he was probably only seven or eight and was only in this because his brother was. I had to laugh that his name is Eric since that's the name of his brother in Boy Meets World  and every time I think of Eric Matthews, I think of "Fee-nay! Fee-nay! Fee-eee-eee-nay!" And when he thought "Yale" was pronounced "Ya-lay". His dad is played by Daniel Stern which is really weird since they both played the same character on The Wonder Years...it's like young Kevin Arnold from the '60s is meeting future adult Kevin Arnold from the '90s. It's like that episode of Quantum Leap when Sam Beckett leaps back into his own body when he was a kid...oh, boy!

The parents have not been getting along and they tell their sons they are getting a trial separation. It also doesn't help that every morning they wake up to little nuisances they believe Brian has caused such as leaving his bike behind the dad's car so he runs over it when he backs up or messes being made in the house. Brian believes it's Eric who is causing this, but his little brother insists it's the monster who lives under his bed. To prove there are no monsters, Brian switches rooms with Eric and this is when we meet a monster named Maurice (played by Howie Mandel). Good effing Lord. This has got to be the most irritating character in the history of cinema. He acts like he's on cocaine and has a bad case of ADD and has just eaten about a thousand pixie sticks. God, I wanted this character to die a slow, painful death that's how much I despised him. And we almost get that because sunlight makes him melt (so he's just a pile of clothes) and if the sun completely rises, he will die. He begs Brian to push him under the bed, but Brian isn't having it since he wrecked his bike, but then his conscience catches up with him and he shoves him under the bed where he heals and becomes a fully formed monster again. If only Brian had just left him...

Mandel's idea of acting is just flaring his arms around and jumping around and being really loud and obnoxious. When he sees Brian's baseball cards, he says, "Need them got them, have them, got them," just super obnoxious. Why would anyone want to be friends with this guy is beyond me. The opening line of the movie is Brian saying how he met his first friend Maurice in this new town and how he's never had a friend like him. Well, thank God for that is what I say! If I had to hang around someone that irritating, I would have to force myself to drink just so I wouldn't murder the person! He should be banned from the human world just for calling pizza "'za". What kind of person says, "Let's order some 'za?" A person who I never want to meet, that's who.

We learn that Maurice is part of a monster community (aka extras dressed up in Halloween costumes) who live underground (aka a cheap set with boxes and staircases) and who wreck havoc during the night where they can enter kids' bedroom from underneath their bed and pull pranks, making the parents believe it was their kids who caused all these shenanigans. Maurice seems to be proud of this as he gleefully tells Brian, "We're the reason why kids get sent to their rooms; the reason why brothers hate their sisters; the reason why parents send their kids back to camp." Brian also seems to love this which doesn't make any sense since HE was blamed for all the crap that Maurice pulled that made his parents (especially his dad) furious. Why would any kid like this guy who's "job" it is to get kids in trouble? Maurice brings Brian along with him as we get a montage of them "visiting" (aka breaking and entering into) childrens' bedrooms and pulling pranks. For some reason, Brian is able to materialize from the floor into the monster world even though humans should not be able to do this, right? I don't know, I didn't write the rules of this stupid world. It seems like the writers of this movie didn't think about that either. During the montage we see Maurice and Brian track mud on a white carpet with shoes; paint a girl's bedroom wall, then paint her face to look like she's the culprit; put plastic wrap over a toilet seat; put peanut butter on a phone receiver; smear their hands in chocolate sauce, then place handprints all over the fridge; Maurice places a q-tip with his ear wax back into a glass jar full of clean q-tips (that reminded me of that scene from Shrek), and even though we don't see it, apparently they also shaved someone's cat as someone's parents scream to them about that when we see the inevitable (and painful) montage of the innocent victims who get screamed at by their parents.

The only part of the movie I genuinely laughed at is when they enter the first bedroom and Brian says, "This is someone else's house" and Maurice replies, "No, duh, where'd you park the squad car, Dick Tracy?"

During their night of chaos, they also visit Ronnie, the big bully at Brian's school who is played by Buzz McCallister. They find his school lunch in the fridge and replace the tuna fish with cat food, and, more reprehensibly, Maurice drinks/spills his apple juice, then proceeds to pee in it, claiming, "Ronnie's gonna be pissed!" The next day everyone at school is beyond thrilled when Ronnie takes a swig of the urine and spits it out on the principal. I don't think he even warrants getting such cruel treatment; even though he's the bully he doesn't do anything bad except use his bigger size to intimidate the younger kids. Not even Buzz McCallister would deserve such a cruel punishment. However, he will join Brian and the others good kids by the end of the movie and I have no idea when they suddenly became friends.

There's a lot of inappropriate things in this movie and I'm not just talking about how many times the word "shit" is uttered and not just by kids. There's a scene where Maurice pulls down Brian's pants so he's just standing in his boxer shorts (no reason why he does that) and a female monster who is played by a young girl tells him, "Nice ass." Yeah, that really happens. Then Maurice and Brian visit Kiersten, the girl Brian has a crush on, but he won't admit he has a crush on her even though he's thrilled to find a Polaroid picture of himself in her bedroom that she took (she's into photography). They are literally standing over her bed watching her and it's really creepy. Then we get one of two masturbation jokes when Maurice makes his hand into a dog puppet who "eats" her big science paper that's due the next day while stroking his hand and saying something like, "The right hand...man's best friend." Like, really movie? Also, what is Brian doing that he doesn't even notice that Maurice is ruining his crush's homework? Kiersten ends up failing and Brian is pissed at Maurice. He also gets angry at him when Maurice brings him along to scare a baby and decides to saw off all the legs of the beds so Maurice can't come out from under the bed anymore. His mom believes this is how he's learning to cope with the separation and seems to be okay that her son is ruining all the beds. Way to be a parent, lady.

Brian finds out that since he's been spending so much time down in the monster world, he's suddenly starting to become one because his limbs are starting to disappear when light appears. (So does this mean that Maurice and the others were once kids who turned into monsters? Maurice does tell Brian he is eleven, but I thought he meant he was eleven in monster years. I guess I should have paid more attention while watching this!)

When Eric goes missing, Brian knows where he is and gets Kiersten and Eric's friend, Todd, to help with the rescue and later Ronnie will join them. By this time I have no idea what's going on and I really don't care. After Brian convinces Kiersten and Todd  that a monster underground exists (since it's so easy for humans to access), they get a bunch of flashlights and defeat this monster who we've never met before named Boy (because he's dressed as a school boy, I guess?) who has Eric held hostage. I guess he's the ruler of this monster world and we're just meeting him in the last ten minutes of the move. Because that makes sense. He tells Brian that he'll let Eric and the others go if Brian stays and becomes a monster and that's when they use the flashlight to get away. Maurice also comes to the rescue, they defeat the bad monster, yada, yada, yada, they need to get home but they can't go to Boston because the sun is up so they need to run to California (on the set they just put a bunch of signs with American cities in geographical order) to return to the human world.

Brian and Maurice have a tearful goodbye (WHY?) and while I'm watching this, I'm thinking that they're trying to make this like the friendship between Chunk and Sloth in The Goonies, but at least Sloth isn't annoying and that was actually a sweet friendship. Brian calls his parents to tell him he found Eric and that they're in Malibu. I don't know which is more ridiculous: the fact that his parents don't know Malibu is in California (SERIOUSLY?) or the phone on the wall that has a HUMONGOUS keypad...is this phone for people with a vision impairment? Also, I've never seen a home phone with the keypad on the wall instead of on the phone. That was super weird. When his parents ask how they ended up in California (fair question), he simply replies, "Uh, it's kind of a long story" and that's the end of the movie. Lame, lame, lame. And lazy AF.

While watching this movie, I noticed there's a lot of close up of people's faces, especially that of Kiersten and they do it with Brian a couple of times. It was just a really odd choice. If I were an actor, I sure wouldn't want people seeing my face so close up on the screen!

Brian's favorite food is an onion and peanut butter sandwich...and those are raw onions, ugh! Not that it would be any better if they were cooked, but at least it would be more tolerable to eat. This has got to be the most disgusting sandwich and I say this as someone who knows someone who likes peanut butter, lettuce, and mayo sandwiches (yeah, I'm just as baffled as you are).

This movie is truly awful. I feel sorry for all the parents whose kids dragged them too see this garbage. Luckily my parents were spared since I have no recollection of this movie from my childhood. (But I'm sure they had to see a lot of other crap! Sorry, Mom and Dad!)

I did some research (pretty much watched YouTube reviews of this movie) and a common thread I noticed was that everyone brought up this ad that was played before the movie on the video cassette where kids could call a 1-900 number to enter a contest and win prizes. You need to watch it to believe it because it's so amazingly awful and hilarious. It's like the late '80s threw up all over it. While watching I took note of the fine print at the bottom that they know that kids aren't reading when they watch this! They do say the call is 95 cents a minute and that kids should get permission from their parents first, but still. It sounds like you call the number and have to answer trivia questions, then you send your answers to the sweepstake address. Now you KNOW this game probably last about twenty minutes and they are milking you for all that 95 cents a minute. No sensible parent would agree to this. I would love to know how many kids entered this contest and they must not have told their parents, right? Boy, I bet their parents were pissed when they saw their telephone bill! I also noticed that the address they sent their answers to was in Blair, Nebraska, of all places. Now I live in Nebraska and I have never been to Blair, but now that I know it's the home of the Little Monsters sweepstake, I may have to visit. Was my sarcasm thick enough for you? Also, how did I go nearly thirty years without ever knowing this terrible rap song existed? I feel robbed.

Nerd Alert

Ready Player One

Director: Steven Spielberg 

Cast: Tye Sheridan, Mark Rylance, Ben Mendelsohn, Olivia Cooke, Lena Waithe, Simon Pegg

Released: March 29, 2018

Viewed in theaters: April 10, 2018

I will be spoiling both the movie AND the book, so you have been warned! And there are things that happen in the book that don't happen in the movie and vice versa.

I remember when the book by Ernest Cline came out in 2011 because I had a subscription to Entertainment Weekly and I first found out about it when it was reviewed in that magazine. I thought the premise sounded interesting, about a teen living in the year 2045 who has an obsession with pop culture from the '80s. However, when I realized that most of the pop culture references were from video games, I decided this book wasn't for me since I knew I wouldn't get any of the references, no matter what decade they were from! Fast forward six years later when I saw a trailer for this movie. I was impressed it was directed by Steven Spielberg (imagine writing a book and having the movie adaptation being directed by SPIELBERG, yeah, I'm jealous!) and thought it looked visually interesting. However, I still wasn't interested in reading/seeing it, but then I decided to check out the book from the library and give it a shot. I really thought I would be bored reading it and wouldn't understand the references. Well, while I mostly didn't understand ALL the references, I ended up really enjoying it and had a lot of fun reading it. The premise of the book (and the movie) is that everybody is obsessed with this virtual world called the Oasis created by a man named James Halliday (Mark Rylance) and his friend Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg) who were born in 1972 and have an obsession with '80s culture since they were teenagers then and that's when they discovered their love for all things film, video games, music, and anything pop culture. I should also point out that the author was born in 1972. 

The Oasis is this virtual world where you can literally spend your entire day interacting with other people, going to school or work, and traveling to different places all without ever leaving your home. The only thing you still need the real world for is to eat, sleep, and use the bathroom. Naturally, there are a lot of rules in the Oasis and while they touch on some of them in the movie, it's much more thoroughly explained in the book. I think the reason why I enjoyed the book more than the movie is because of this. I feel like I would have been a bit confused if I had seen the movie without reading the book because it seems like you can do anything and go anywhere, but that's not necessarily true. There are levels and points you need to acquire before your avatar can go to certain places; do certain things. 

Our protagonist is eighteen-year-old Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) who goes by the name Parzival in the Oasis. Everyone has an avatar they can control and give their own name and looks. Most of the time they are better looking versions of themselves in real life, but some are well known pop culture characters. In the book, he goes to school in the Oasis, but they skip this detail in the movie. I understand that they don't have time to show everything even if the movie is two hours and twenty minutes! Wade lives in Columbus, Ohio with his aunt and jerk boyfriend because his parents died when he was young. They live in "The Stacks" which are trailer homes stacked on top of one another to save room. Things are looking bleak in 2045 and that's why everyone escapes to the Oasis. 

We find out that five years ago Halliday passed away, but left a message for everyone in the Oasis. He has left a series of clues to find keys and whoever finds all three keys will win his inheritance of 47 billion dollars and complete control of the Oasis. (Keep in mind Morrow is still alive, but he and Halliday had a falling out before his death). Everyone will have to go through a series of challenges based on their knowledge of pop culture, specifically '80s pop culture. Now the least believable thing about the book is a teenager from the 2040s being obsessed with the '80s. I understand that everyone in this world is obsessed with the '80s because it will help the win a crapload of money, but still. Teenagers today don't care about the '80s and why should they? (Even though the '80s IS an amazing decade!) Wade even mentions he's seen Blade Runner a ridiculous amount of times, like 37. Gimme a break. I've never seen any movie that amount of times! But whatever, you just have to go with it and enjoy the ride.

I actually thought the book was going to be ALL '80s references, and while that is the decade where most of the references come from, they also mention pop culture from different decades like The Iron Giant (which makes an appearance in the movie)) and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (I assume they were talking about the Peter Jackson films, though I know there is an animated version from 1978...that would be hilarious is they were talking about those, but I'm pretty sure it was the Jackson ones). There's even a scene where the characters are discussing the Indiana Jones movies and how awful Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was. This made me chuckle since Steven Spielberg would end up directing the film adaptation of Ready Player One. I'm guessing that didn't hurt his feelings too much! The movie is just all about pop culture references, not necessarily those from the '80s. 

Wade doesn't have any friends in the real world (except in the book he's friends with an old woman who lives in The Stacks who grew up in the '80s and she tells him stories of what that was like, but she's not in the movie), but he has a couple in the Oasis. There's Aech (Lena Waithe) and Artemis (excuse, me, Art3mis (Olivia Cooke)). I was spoiled that Lena Waithe played Aech in the real world, who is actually a male in the Oasis so I figured that was a twist in the book, or Spielberg wanted to make it a twist for the movie, but she does reveal herself to be an African-American woman who is playing as a caucasian male in the Oasis. Aech is very different in the movie because he's described as looking like your everyday high school student, but in the movie he's made to have the physique of The Hulk or The Thing from The Fantastic Four. Artemis plays Parzival's love interest and there's even a scene where he says, "I love you" even though he doesn't even know her in the real world and has never met her. It's pretty cringe-y. There's also two young Japanese boys named Daito and Sho who have nothing much to do in the movie and there's a huge plot in the book that is completely scrapped in the movie where the older one is killed by IOI, the evil corporation led by Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) who will stop at nothing to obtain the keys and acquire the fortune and to be able to run the Oasis. These five characters are called the High Five (although that's only mentioned once in the movie) because they were the first five avatars to beat the first challenge and obtain the first key. 

There are three challenges and this is where the movie and book deviate significantly because they are totally different. I can only assume they do this because of licensing rights and because it might be super boring watching someone play Joust against Anorak, the avatar of Halliday. (Even though he's dead, he's still able to access his avatar, but it's better explained in the book). In the movie, the first challenge is a car race (and Parzival drives the DeLorean from Back to the Future) which is a lot more visually fun and also incorporates a lot of pop culture references such as King Kong and the T-rex from Jurassic Park and they even pass a movie marquee which is featuring the newest Jack Slater movie, so that was a deep cut with The Last Action Hero reference!

In the book, even though it may take him more than one try, Parzival is able to beat the challenges because he has spent hours upon hours studying video games and movies and knows every move to make or every line from a movie that he's watched more than 30 times. (Has he seen every '80s movie that many times? That's a little ridiculous!) But in the movie, he gets his answer by going to a museum of Halliday's inner most thoughts where you can access any memory from his life. Don't ask me how that was done, but remember, this IS 2045 so a lot of technical advancements have been put into place to do that kind of thing, apparently. This is where Parzival gets a clue on how to win the first challenge and becomes the first person on the scoreboard.

The second challenge both deals with movies in both forms of media. In the book, all he has to do is play Matthew Broderick in War Games and recite all his lines and he'll win the key. You know, even with a move I've seen many times, I still don't think I would be able to remember every single line of the main character, but he states he's seen War Games several times because he's a nerd. I've seen War Games zero times. I've also seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail zero times which is the last challenge he has to beat in the book. There is mention of The Goonies which excited me but it's only one sentence and is not involved as a challenge, but just as something he does to get more points. There is also mention of several more video games which I have never heard of and I kept crossing my fingers we would get a Super Mario Bros. mention, but, alas, that never happens. He does play Pac-Man (finally! something I have heard of!) where he gets a special coin that will come in handy later on. The movie has them being in the world of The Shining and instead of acting out the entire movie (because that would be a bit much), they have to find Kira, the woman Halliday loved, but she ended up marrying Morrow, so you could say that had something to do with their falling out. I have never seen The Shining (no, thank you!), but I knew about the creepy twins. That was about the only reference from that movie I got. Aech had never seen The Shining either, so when he goes into room 237, everyone in my audience who was familiar with the movie, laughed knowingly. 

There's a huge subplot of the book where Parzival gets captured by IOI on purpose in order to hack in their system and acquire some codes. They give this plot to Artemis in the movie. They also completely wipe away the plot where Morrow offers to help the High Five (well, four, at this point), who are all in danger from IOI (they've already killed the older Japanese boy and killed everyone living in The Stacks because they thought Wade was there, but he wasn't) and offers to fly them to his home in Oregon. He does not offer any help in the movie, but instead the High Five (who all conveniently live in the same city) end up together in the real world. Wade ends up meeting Samantha (Artemis) in the middle of the movie and I think this works better than in the book where he literally meets her for the first time on the penultimate page. It's pretty late when they meet each other face to face. However, while I like his interaction with Samantha better in the movie than in the book, I think his interaction with Helen (Aech) is better in the book. He is shocked at first to see that not only is Aech a woman, but she's also African-American, but he realizes it's still Aech and is very happy to meet her and you hear her story and why she chose her avatar. In the movie, she's just like, yep, this is me. Surprise! 

The third key involves him having to enter a castle that's been blocked by the IOI. Parzival enlists a bunch of avatars to help them and a huge battle ensues. I had to go to the bathroom during this part, so I know I missed a lot of pop culture references with different characters fighting in the battle. I heard Chucky was there...seriously, who would want to make their avatar a murdering doll? And an ugly one at that? That is one sick individual. I looked at a website that listed all the pop culture references in the movie and I know I missed a lot. Not just the ones that went over my head, but also ones that I would be familiar with, but there are some that go by so fast that it's easy to miss them if you blink. I heard there was gremlins in this movie, but I totally missed them! There's also other famous pop culture cars in the first challenge that I didn't register seeing. This might actually be a better movie to rent or stream so you can pause your DVD or device or rewind if necessary. So this movie if a lot of fun if you want to see all of those. 

The movie ends with Wade beating the last challenge, which is some early video games and everyone is happy. He gets a crapload of money and complete access to the Oasis and his first rule is that nobody will have access to the Oasis on Tuesday and Thursday so they can experience the real world. Insert eye roll here. 

While the movie has some fun scenes, I would recommend the book over it. I just had more fun reading the book than I did seeing the movie. I think you have to be a real nerd to appreciate it.

Treasure Hunters

National Treasure

Director John Turteltaub

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Jon Voight, Sean Bean, Justin Bartha, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Plummer

Released: November 19, 2004

Viewed in theaters: November 27, 2004

Picture it: Lincoln, Nebraska, Thanksgiving 2004. My family is debating over which movie we should see one evening. I want to see National Treasure. My brother wants to see Alexander. I don't know what my parents voted for, but one or both of them must have wanted to see Alexander (the Oliver Stone movie with Colin Farrell and Angelina Jolie...I have a feeling most people have forgotten about the existence of that movie!) because we ended up seeing that. I was so mad because that movie looked like a total snooze fest and I was right! I was so bored during the three plus hours I sat through it. (It could have been only a little over two hours for all I know, but it definitely felt LONG!) Even my family agreed it was a terrible and boring movie and pretty much admitted we chose the wrong movie. Now, National Treasure isn't the best movie in the world, but at least it's a hell of a lot more entertaining and fun than some long drawn out historical movie. (There's a good bet I will never review Alexander for this blog!) Now I did end up seeing this movie with my mom (she must have either voted with me or didn't care which movie we saw or maybe she just felt bad for me) the next day, but it still infuriates me that I wasted three hours of my life watching Alexander!

This is probably the only family friendly movie Nicolas Cage has ever made. This and its sequel, which I've only seen once (I've seen this one a handful of times). Oh, and that Christmas movie he did with Tea Leoni. There's probably a few others he's made too, but they seem to be very rare for the actor who is mostly known for R-rated action movies. See Rock, The. Or Con Air. Or Face/Off. In this Indiana Jones/Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?/The Goonies hybrid, he plays Ben Gates whose ancestors were part of some secret society who hid a bunch of treasure. He's had his eye on the prize since his great grandfather (played by Christopher Plummer) told him the story as a young boy, but it isn't until "current day" 2004 when he gets anywhere near finding it. 

With a clue that the treasure "lies with Charlotte", he leads an expedition to the Arctic which includes his right-hand man, Riley (Justin Bartha), who's pretty much in the movie to be the comic relief and a post-Boromir, pre-Ned Stark Sean Bean who plays his partner turned arch nemesis, Ian, and then some other guy who's Ian's crony. Not only do they find the ship in the ice, after, like, five seconds of chipping away, but they find the most important part of the ship which provides a clue. They figure out the clue pertains to the Declaration of Independence that will lead them to the treasure. Now that I think about it, this movie is a precursor to The DaVinci Code. Ian wants to steal the DoI, but Ben puts his foot down and says absolutely not. We then learn that Ian and his crony are bad guys as they try to kill Ben and Riley, and while they escape, they don't succeed in killing the two good guys.

When they return to D.C., Ben tries to warn anyone who will listen that the DoI is in danger of being stolen, but no one takes them seriously because there is no possible way for the DoI to be stolen because it is perfectly safe and secure. "The Declaration of Independence" is uttered many times during the film. It wasn't until halfway through the movie when I realized I should have been keeping count of how many times it was said, but by then, it was too late. I'm pretty sure if there was a category in The Guinness Book of World Records for the most times the phrase "The Declaration of Independence " is uttered in a movie, National Treasure would be victorious. Since the FBI won't listen to them, they go to the National Archives and warn Dr. Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger) who also dismisses them and assures them the artifact is very safe.

Ben believes the only way to keep the DoI safe is to steal it himself. At least he will make sure its returned while Ian and his cronies won't care if it gets mucked up in the process of stealing it and using it to find the treasure. Plus, let's be honest, Ben wants that sweet treasure for himself. Riley tells Ben there is no possible way for them to steal the DoI because it's protected by security beyond measure, but Ben has found a loophole and plans to steal it when it's being treated in the preservation room, the only place where it won't be under (so much) lock and key. He and Riley devise this big plan that, of course, goes without a hitch. First, they have to make sure the DoI will be sent to the preservation room so Riley goes to the National Archives and surreptitiously points a laser light at it or something so a warning goes off to indicate that something has been tampered with it. No idea if this is a real thing or not. You know, I have been to D.C. a handful of times (maybe four) and I have never seen the DoI.

They plan to have the DoI in the preservation room the same night a big gala will be going on at the National Archives building. Ben will be the one doing the stealing while Riley stays in the van to direct him and warn him if there's any problems. Ben goes in as a maintenance man (he stole the identity of another maintenance man so he would be on the list...or something...I don't know...this whole plan is so convoluted) and is able to get through, no questions asked. I did think it was funny when Riley and Ben pull up at the building right before they're about to pull off the heist and as Ben is getting out of the van, Riley asks him, "Are you sure this is a good idea?" and Ben just slams the door, totally ignoring him.

Once Ben is in, he changes into a tuxedo in the restroom. He does this right in the open, and not in a stall. I at least hoped he locked the door so nobody would see him changing out of a maintenance outfit in a tuxedo because that wouldn't look suspicious! He enters the party where he chats with Abigail, taking her glass of champagne so she can take another glass for her date. You see, this is all part of the plan because they need her fingerprints to get into the preservation room. Ben will use a black light to see which keys she has pressed for the password and they figure out it's "Valley Forge".

Nobody is in the preservation room at all, so Ben is able to get the DoI. However, he's not alone for long as Ian and his cronies have the same idea to steal it that night and they're about to enter the room. Ben takes the whole thing, bullet proof glass and all that the DoI is surrounded in. It's a good thing he has it because once he's on the elevator and the bad guys enter, they start shooting at him and he uses it as a shield. He takes out the DoI and rolls it up like a poster. My favorite part of the movie is when he goes into the gift shop and the cashier sees it on his person and asks him if he's trying to steal that. She tells him it's $35 and he says, "For this? That's a lot." Haha, for the real DoI? I would say that's a steal! He ends up paying $70 because he buys that and then gets a replica to throw off Ian later.

Abigail figure out what's going on and she gets involved in a car chase and this is when Ben gives Ian the fake DoI. Ben, Riley, and Abigail end up at Ben's father's (Jon Voight) house. Since Ben used a credit card to pay for the DoI poster he can't go back to his own house. The DoI goes through a lot of duress during its time out in the real world and it's truly amazing it made it back in one piece. Using lemon juice and heat, they find some clues on the back. But instead of a map like they thought they would find, it's a bunch of numbers that pertain to some letters written by Benjamin Franklin that are important to the case. The letters, which Ben's father used to own, have now been donated to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

The clues and many different cities they visit (D.C., Philly, New York, Boston) reminds me of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, only the version where you're trying to find her in the U.S., which isn't as fun. There's a scene where they go to an Urban Outfitters in Philly to buy new clothes so they won't look so conspicuous in their fancy gala clothes. Right out in the open, when they're buying their clothes, they're talking about the clues. I'm surprised nobody gave them any odd looks. I mean, if you were in an Urban Outfitters and heard three adults talking about going to the Liberty Bell to find the next clue that will lead to long-lost treasure, wouldn't you be a little suspicious?

The clue leads them to a brick in the wall where Ben finds these old-fashioned spectacles used to look at the map and find the next clue. I can't remember exactly where in the movie Nicolas Cage says this, but there's a scene where he finds a clue and he says, "Can it really be that simple?" Everything leading to the clue is just so ridiculously easy, it's almost laughable. But it is a Disney family film, so the best thing is to just enjoy the ride.

Right on their heels is Ian and his cronies. Ben wants them to split up so Ian can't have the DoI and glasses at the same time because they need both to decipher the next clue. He takes the glasses and Riley and Abigail take the DoI. This thing gets drug through the streets of Philly and into a meat market. True, it's in a protective tube, but still. Ian apprehends the DoI and he also kidnaps Ben's father as a hostage in order to get the glasses.

An FBI agent played by Harvey Keitel has captured Ben and tells him he has two options: he can either go to jail or he can tell them where they can find the DoI and go to jail, knowing he did the right thing. Ben escapes and ends up in New York to join the search for the treasure which Ian and his cronies have now joined. The next clue is underneath the Trinity Church and they are all on this rickety makeshift elevator and one of the no-name bad guys falls off and plunges into this never ending abyss of darkness. Where did this chasm come from? All the characters are trying to jump to safety and there's a moment where Ben, holding on to the arm of a dangling Abigail, has to decide between saving her or saving the DoI which is now starting to slip from his shoulder. (Oh yeah, I should mention, Ben got it back). He asks Abigail if she trusts him and lets go of her once he's sure she'll land on a platform a few feet below them. He apologizes later for dropping her and she assures him it's okay and that she would have done the same thing. Can you imagine how much sh*t he would have been in if he had let the Declaration of Independence fall into a deep abyss of darkness? History would be lost forever! FOR-EV-ER!

Ben and his father tell Ian and his cronies that the next clue is in Boston because of the lantern they see. Leaving Ben, Ben's father, Abigail, and Riley, Ian and his cronies start to go back up on the makeshift elevator, leaving the others without any way to get back up. They start protesting, but it's really a non-issue, because surprise! Ben gave them a decoy answer and the next clue is actually right where they are! Who didn't see that coming? They find a huge room (seriously, this thing must have been five football fields long!) filled with treasure after treasure after treasure. There are mummies! Scrolls from the Library of Alexandria! An important looking medallion! And lots of other stuff! And, most importantly, there are stairs to an exit.

Ben calls the police and hands back the DoI to Keitel, who, in return tells him that someone has to go to jail. Ben offers him a bribe of ten billion dollars and tells him he can get him the real bad guy who's in Boston where they arrest Ian and his cronies. Poor Sean Bean. But at least he didn't die this time!

The priceless artifacts have been donated to museums all over the world. There's a joke that Ben and Riley, who are credited with finding the treasure, only got one percent of the profits and Riley is complaining about that while driving a fancy convertible and tells Ben he could have bought a bigger house and the camera pans back to show a huge mansion. Haha, even with only one percent, they still got a ton of money. Bring on National Treasure 3! 

Little Children

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

Director: Joe Johnston

Cast: Rick Moranis, Matt Frewer, Marcia Strassman, Kristine Sutherland, Amy O'Neil, Robert Oliveri, Thomas Brown, Jared Rushton

Released: June 23, 1989

I hadn't seen this movie in a very long time, but I have to say I really enjoyed watching it again. And while there are a few effects that seem very obvious, I think it still holds up quite well for when it was made. If you look at the cast, you may only be familiar with Rick Moranis, but if you ever watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you may notice Kristine Sutherland's name. She played Buffy's mom on that show, Joyce Summers. In this she plays the neighbor to Moranis's scientist character, Wayne Szalinski. 

He has invented a machine that shrinks things, or at least it's supposed to, but it's not quite working. Instead of shrinking things, it explodes them as that is what happens when he tests an apple. We see him giving him a presentation about his new invention, but people in the audience keep leaving and the joke is made that the only thing he's shrinking is the audience. It's actually not a bad idea what he's invented...just think of how much cargo you could get on a ship if everything were greatly reduced in size...of course, you would just have to be able to get those items back to their normal size. And just think how convenient it would be if you moved! You could literally pack up everything you owned into a suitcase! I love it! Although, you probably wouldn't want terrorists getting their hands on this machine. That could spell trouble. This is a movie that could have gone either way - either comedy or flat out horror. But since this is a Disney family film, it's mostly a comedy with a few suspenseful moments. Let's just say if this were the real world, these kids would be dead, dead, dead, and dead! In fact, I was shocked to find out (according to IMDB, not sure where the actual source came from) that there were originally FIVE kids and one of them drowns during the scene the sprinklers are accidentally turned on. Yikes! This is a Disney movie! They're normally not known for being so dark. And I want to know if this kid was part of the Szalinski clan or the Thompson family or if he (or she) was just a another kid from the neighborhood. For what kind of movie it is, I think they made the right call by not adding such a morbid detail!

Wayne Szalinski is so ahead of his time that he even invented texting before texting existed! Well, a very early draft of it. From the kitchen, his children can let him know that it's time to eat, and in return, he can type a message from his computer in the attic where he works and let them know when he'll be down and it's printed out. He just needed to invent auto correct because "I'll be down in five minutes" came out as "I'll be down on fine mimicks."

We have the Szalinskis and the Thompsons who live next door to each other, but don't seem to like each other and the kids aren't really friends with each other. Big Russ Thompson (Matt Frewer) is the one married to Sutherland's character, Mae, and he hates all the noise coming from the Szalinski side since it's usually early in the morning. He has two sons: Little Russ (Thomas Brown) and Ron (Jared Rushton). He finds out his oldest son didn't make the football team (but we later find out he actually quit) because he's too scrawny and is trying to help him with his self-esteem about his size (ah, you see what the movie is doing?) It was bugging me so much because the kid who played Ron looked so familiar to me. I know I had seen him before, so I looked him up. He played Tom Hanks's friend, Billy, in Big, which came out the year prior. Only in that movie he's a redhead and he's a blond in this one. He's a little jerk, always fighting with everyone and causing arguments, although he will have a touching moment later on in the film. The Szalinski children include popular high schooler Amy (Amy O'Neill) who is planning on going to the mall later that day because she is sure she is going to be asked to the dance by the guy she likes. Meanwhile, Russ Jr., who's the same age as her, has a crush on her. Amy's little brother, Nick (Robert Oliveri) is a few years younger than Ron and he's just like his dad: a major nerd and super smart, and he owns it. In fact, he tricks a neighbor kid into mowing the lawn for him, which is his chore. 

Their adventure begins on a day when Wayne is at his convention and his wife (Marcia Strassman) is out and the Thompson family is getting ready for a camping trip and the two adults are too busy to pay any mind to their kids. Ron is playing with his baseball and hits it right into the Zsalinski's attic where it conveniently lands right in front of the shrinking machine. His older brother takes him next door so he can explain what happened. The two young boys go upstairs and when they don't return (because they've been shrunken!), their older siblings go up to see what's going on and they shrink too. Somehow the machine activated when it was hit by the baseball and shrinks all the kids. But before it did that, we see it shrink a couch.

When Wayne comes home, Quark, the Szalinski terrier, barks to lets him know that something is up, but I didn't understand why he didn't go over right to the kids. The damn dog never indicates where the kids are, even though he can smell and hear them while people cannot hear the shrunken kids yelling. I just felt like Quark never tried hard enough to get Wayne's attention about the size of the kids, but I know there would be no movie if Wayne found them and fixed the situation. However, Quark will come in handy in a later scene when Wayne almost becomes a cannibal! Even though I've seen the movie before and know that everything turns out all right in the end, I thought for sure Wayne was going to step on all the kids when he entered the attic. His feet get pretty close to them. The special effects are a lot of fun and this looked like it would have been a fun movie to be in. When Wayne comes home and sees his attic is a mess, he grabs a broom and starts sweeping. All the kids are running from the bristles, but then they grab hold onto them when they can't outrun the broom and are dumped from a dust pan into the outside trash, which is located in the backyard for some weird reason. Don't most people keep their trash in the garage, then bring it out to the curb on trash day? The kids get out of the trash bag and slide down a blade of glass which looked like a lot of fun. Not as fun as the water slide from The Goonies, mind you, but who wouldn't want to slide down a blade of grass?

Nick, our nerdy smart kid calculates that they are a quarter of an inch tall and are sixty four feet from the house which is the equivalent of 3.2 miles (I would have guessed a lot more for how small they are!) This movie could never be made today. Why? Because Nick's calculator also shrunk with him and that's how he was able to figure out the dimensions. If a kid in a current take of this movie was shrunk, they mostly would likely have their phone and could just text their parents and tell them that they can be found on the stone in the middle of the yard. Sure, it might take them awhile to text the message! It would be fun to see a current update on this story, but you would need to find a way to make it so it's not so easy for them to fix the problem.

Ron, our little turd of a character, is whining about how they're supposed to go fishing and Amy replies, "Yeah, right! How are you going, as bait?" And when Amy says, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto," Ron replies with, "I don't think we're on the food chain anymore, Dorothy." There's a few famous movie quotes in this movie. When they realize that Quark can possible hear them and start whistling to get his attention, Russ doesn't know how to whistle, so Amy tells him, "You just put your lips together and blow."

The majority of the movie takes place in the backyard "jungle". They come across a stream of water which is most likely dog urine (eww!) The kids are separated when Nick is nearly attacked by a bee, but Russ saves him and they both jump on the bee's back and it flies around the backyard several times. We even see them past Wayne and they're screaming at him, but he's just trying to shoo the bee away. The special effects don't quite hold up. It's obvious they shot the actors on the back of a large mechanical bee in front of a green screen.

Now around this time, Wayne has discovered what's going on and knows the kids have been shrunk. His shrunken couch is his first clue that his machine works. I laughed when he told his wife that his machine works and she asked him if the kids knew and he's like, "Yeah, they know." When he does tell her what happened, he just tells her, "I shrunk the kids", omitting the "Honey" from the title. Wayne figures out that he threw out the kids with the trash and they're now somewhere in the backyard. While wearing binoculars, he uses stilts to walk on the grass which doesn't make any sense to me. Sure, there's less area on the leg of a stilt than someone's shoes, but HE COULD STILL SMASH ALL OF THEM TO SMITHEREENS! He will eventually be hooked up to a contraption that swings him around the yard so at least he's not putting any weight on the ground. When he's on the stilts, this is when the sprinklers are turned on accidentally, (and this is when the fifth character would have died), the kids have to run for their lives. Amy nearly does drown, but Russ Jr. saves her by giving her mouth-to-mouth (something he learned in French class - this will become a big joke in the movie).

After Amy is saved by Russ, she starts to see him in a new light. There is a really odd scene we see with the Szalinski parents expressing their concerns for their children when it starts to get dark and there has been no sign of them yet. Is Mrs. Szalinski worried that her kids are only a quarter of an inch tall and could be killed by insects, birds, or small rodents...which mostly come out during the night? Or that the weather could kill them, especially if it rains? Or just the fact that if a person or even a dog or cat walks across the backyard, they could be squashed? No, she's worried that it's dark and that her teenage daughter might be getting it on with the neighbor boy. First of all, before this moment Amy and Russ had never really interacted that much before, it's not like he was her boyfriend. And even if he was, their younger brothers are with them and they're super tiny. I don't think they would even be thinking about that. Now, they do kiss, but that's as far as it goes. But shouldn't have she been worried about a lot more things before she was worried about that? The kids find a Lego piece and end up spending the night in it (very cool!)


They are now closer to the house because they had help getting to the Lego piece. They had come across a huge Hostess oatmeal cookie (you know, the ones with the cream filling in the middle...do they even still make those?) The kids are excited and run towards it as they are super hungry. Ron had even mentioned that he was so hungry that he could eat a corn dog the size of a truck and his brother comments that a regular one WOULD be the size of a truck! Now, I don't know how long this oatmeal cookie had been lying in the grass, but it is a shock that it wasn't SWARMING with ants. However one ant does show up and they run away, scared. This is a baby ant (not sure how they know that) and it's bigger than them! Somehow they tame the ant, name it Anty (how original), and use a piece of the cookie to guide it towards their house until they reach the Lego and decide to camp out in it. They tell Anty to go home, but the ant has bonded with them, especially Ron, who's crying as he tells Anty to "Go on!" and "Get out of here!" He even tells Anty that his mom will never let him keep him and I'm thinking, Uh, it's an ant...she probably would't even know if you had one!

The next morning the kids are awoken to a terrifying site when they are attacked by a...scorpion! Uh, what the hell? Do most people find scorpions in their backyard like that? I have never (thank god!) seen a scorpion in real life in my life. It just seemed very out of place. The scorpion attacks Ron who is still in the Lego while the other kids have managed to escape. These Legos weren't exactly accurate because there are two holes which Ron manages to escape out of one since the other hole is blocked by the arachnid. Oh, and who should come to the rescue? It's Anty! There's a fight between a baby ant and a full grown scorpion. Yeah, it's the most unfair fight ever, but Anty puts up a good fight. Even though the scorpion backs up and scuttles away when the kids start throwing dirt at it, it's not enough to save Anty, who got stung. Yes, Anty died! While watching this, I said outloud, "He died?", then burst into tears. No, I didn't burst into tears, but my voice wavered and I did feel really sad! And I HATE ants! They're so disgusting! I once had an ant infestation in a place where I used to live and I had to buy a whole bunch of Raid, and oh, God, it was so gross. They were everywhere. But this made me feel really bad for the kids who had grown an attachment to this little gross insect. But I guess it's better for the ant to die, than, you know, an actual human being!

RIP Anty
June 22, 1989 - June 23, 1989

The kids are so close to their home now and even see Wayne's face peering down at them as he continues the search for them the next morning, but of course he can't hear them when they're yelling at him. There's still one more obstacle the kids have to get through (at least in the backyard) before they make it out of there. Remember when Nick got a neighbor kid to mow the lawn for him? Well, it just so happens he comes over the next morning and the Szalinski parents hear the sound of a motor when they're trying to fix the shrinking machine and realize the terrible thing that's going on in their backyard. They're screaming at the kid to stop, but he's wearing headphones and can't hear them. We have another near-death experience where the kids are nearly hacked to death by the blade, but it stops just in the nick of time.

The kids call for Quark again and he comes out to rescue him. When they called for him the other day, he tried to go to them, but he was scared off by the Thompson cat. This time, he just trotted by the cat. Go, Quark! The kids grab onto his fur which more looks like shag carpet when

we get a close up of it and Quark brings them into the kitchen. Here is the scene where he finally brings attention to Wayne when Nick falls into a bowl of Cheerios and Wayne unknowingly scoops his youngest child up onto his spoon and is ABOUT TO EAT HIM and Quark, thank God, bites his leg so he drops the spoon and then notices the minuscule child in his Cheerios. Can we just all give Quark some major kudos here? A man was about to EAT HIS CHILD, but Quark saved the day! Yay, Quark! For the kid in the bowl of Cheerios scene, they had the actor swim in a tank filled with water and food thickener to make it look like milk and the Cheerios were tractor tires with foam around them. I love it!

Now that Wayne has found the kids, all he has to do is bring them back to their original size, but first he wants to test his machine on a living organism to make sure it's safe. There's a funny scene where the dog runs out of the room when he hears that. Wayne is about to do it himself, but Mr. Thompson (the Thompson parents are well aware of what's going on and come over when they find out their kids have been found) tells him he'll be the guinea pig since Wayne needs to control the machine. Of course, everything is fine and the machine works on him and the kids are returned to their normal size.

Despite some outdated effects and the fact that the insects look super fake, and the parents didn't really seem that concerned about their kids being super small, I really enjoyed this movie and had a lot of fun watching it and it was a lot of fun to go back and revisit it. And let's give it up for Quark one last time!

Good dog!