The best aspects of Jurassic World, in which a hybrid super-predator runs amok in the trouble-plagued theme park, are so good that they transport you that exhilarating mental space where the series original director, Steven Spielberg, raised a tentpole back in 1993. The worst aspects are bad indeed: thin characterizations, a blase attitude toward human-on-animal violence and a weird male-supremacist streak that comes close to sneering at unmarried career women who don t have kids.
On the smarter side of the ledger, you can enter three, maybe four large-scale action sequences that do the master proud. Directed by Colin Trevorrow in a style that s Spielbergian but not slavishly so, they re bruising but not overbearing, and laid out with clarity. You always know where you are and what s happening, and you rarely see as much brutality as you think: some of the mayhem is suggested by sound effects, a blur of motion obscured by foreground objects, or a spray of blood on a wall. Every