Jurassic World

(M) ★★★½

Director: Colin Trevorrow.

Cast: Chris Pratt, Dallas Bryce Howard, Vincent D'Onofrio, Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Omar Sy, BD Wong, Irrfan Khan.

"Wait - let me explain Passengers!"

Computer-generated wizardry has become commonplace in movies these days, making it easy to forget how mind-blowing Jurassic Park was back in 1993.

The sense of wonder we felt getting that first glimpse of brachiosaurs across the field, of the T-Rex's ground-shaking entrance, of seeing velociraptors stalking through the kitchen - these were true "wow" moments unlike anything audiences had seen before and that we have rarely seen since.

In some ways Jurassic Park is comparable to Star Wars - not in terms of its pop culture influence, but rather the way it married a tight, taut script with ground-breaking special effects to create a new high watermark in blockbuster moviemaking. The diminishing returns of the not-bad sequels, plus the passage of time, means we tend to forget these things.

But there's still something impressively jaw-dropping about seeing CG dinosaurs on the big screen, making any return visit to Jurassic Park - or in this case Jurassic World - a welcome one.

Fourth time around, the park is open and running quite successfully, with tens of thousands of punters flocking to Isla Nublar every day to watch T-Rex get fed, visit the pterosaur aviary, or ride a baby triceratops.

Story-wise, it's a natural progression. Having developed the technology and cloned the dinosaurs, do you really think John Hammond's successors would let a few dino-related deaths prevent them from making billions of dollars? Of course not. It's as inevitable as the dinosaurs running amok all over again and proving that man shouldn't meddle with such things.

As a result, the plots and themes of Jurassic World are roughly the same as Jurassic Park - man makes dinosaur, dinosaur eats man - with the main difference being everything is bigger and "more", as tends to happen in sequels (and modern-day movies). The dinosaurs are bigger and there are more of them, the action sequences are bigger and there are more of them, and there are plenty more people to serve as dino-food.

"Bigger, faster, louder", as director Trevorrow has put it in interviews, is also the central theme of the film, whereby the sheer thrill of seeing a dinosaur isn't enough, leading the park's scientists to build their own (or for Trevorrow to humourously stage a pterosaur attack outside an Imax theatre screening a pterosaur attack).

So with its similar base plot and themes, Jurassic World is about taking Jurassic Park to the next level, and in one sense it works.

• BONUS (SHORT) PODCAST: Listen to myself, Jono Pech and Sean McComish discuss all things Jurassic Park and the future of the franchise.

The fundamental thrill of seeing dinosaurs running wild is as thrilling as ever, the film's many nods to the original are also welcome, and the presence of Pratt is a sublime bonus.

Where things fall down is in a muddy subplot involving some kind of militaristic group of bad guys led by D'Onofrio, which is never fully explained or resolved.

There is also a tendency to be predictable and a bit cheesy, although thankfully Trevorrow's subversive sense of humour pulls things back from the brink of cheesiness on more than one occasion - a dramatic kiss and a monologuing villain are just two tropes the film pokes fun at to great success.

The marvel and wonder of Jurassic Park can never be matched. Those days are gone. The best we can hope for are solid sequels that ramp up the action without losing sight of the key themes at its heart, and that's what Jurassic World delivers.