Here it comes. The moment I lose my rep as the cheerleader of all things independent and out of the mainstream. My history of seeing the good within the bad. If you want to believe that I’m that always-look-on-the-bright-side, benefit-of-the-doubt reviewer, avert your eyes. And please, avert your eyes from JURASSIC THUNDER.

Normally, this is the part of the review where I give you a quick, spoiler free recap of the film. We will get to that in a moment, but first know that I had to really sit with this film to even process what happened, and what the core story was. JURASSIC THUNDER begins with a pair of annoying, poorly stereotyped women in a comic book store. They cause all kinds of trouble, for no reason besides being entitled, and in the most “Karen” moment of all, demand to speak to a manager. Somehow from that point these excruciating women, stuck in a comic book store full of men, are introduced to Jurassic Thunder, “the holy grail of all comic books”. From there, we are transported into the world of the comic book. And don’t worry, you won’t see any of these characters from the comic shop again.

JURASSIC THUNDER takes us to a secret military base in the Mojave. The American Military is teaming with the Russians to fight a virus that is turning humans into zombies. No amount of firepower is competing with the rampant illness, and all over the world military leaders are getting desperate. The Russians have discovered what they’re calling “a biologic” to help win this losing war. That biologic… is dinosaurs. This is the crux of the entire film. There is not much else to share, because there’s not much else that happens. This movie was a silly short film concept expanded to an hour plus.

Unfortunately, the dinosaurs seem to be the least absurd and unnecessary part of this movie. Bad stereotypes are the name of the game here, and it seems that almost every marginalized group is covered. To some, that’s a plus – there’s a rampant belief that “if you make fun of everyone, you aren’t really making fun of anyone”. I don’t agree with that and found myself rolling my eyes more than anyone should in an hour and twenty minute span. One thing that gave me a small sigh of relief is that the film seems to be completely free of queer people. Of course this is completely unrealistic, but at least it was one group I didn’t have to see dragged through the mud.

One of the most agonizing traits of JURASSIC THUNDER is the urge to make it modern and “topical”. This includes a nauseating “homage” (yikes…) to a certain 45th president of the United States. What could be funny, if a little annoying, if done properly is instead a mess of bad makeup and bad accent/dialect work. Fortunately, I suppose, for this cast, everyone seems to be on the same level in terms of bad and inconsistent accents.

I miss the old days. I miss when Sharknado was fun and new, and no one knew what to make of it. I miss when the line between humor and horror could blur comfortably and seamlessly. I miss finding the humor in a huge, blow-things-up, goofy disaster movie. Somehow JURASSIC THUNDER missed every single mark, and instead is a poorly constructed facsimile of the fun, silly movies that came before it. And no amount of Donald Trump Dance Break Sequences could save it.

2/10 stars