The merits of just enjoying a movie
Published 6:01 pm Saturday, June 20, 2015
Partway through “Jurassic World,” I found myself with a simple choice: I could become engulfed in the myriad of little things irking me about the film or I could just sit back, stop thinking and enjoy the ride.
The nostalgia from one of my first movie-obsessions won, and I opted to enjoy the dinosaur epic like it was 1993.
“Jurassic World” was a fun movie, but it’s far from a perfect movie. In the aftermath of its record-breaking weekend, many have accused the movie of having sexist undertones.
I could have questioned and nitpicked about a lot of things: the characters, the plot, the believability, the whole specially-engineered dinosaur mumbo jumbo, etc. But I stopped myself. “You’re watching a summer blockbuster about dinosaurs being recreated,” I told myself. “Why are you wasting your time questioning the believability and making yourself cranky?”
It was a Saturday. I’d spent the entire morning working on a project and wanted to relax. Yes, I surrendered 100 percent to the “willing suspension of disbelief.”
Now, I’m asking myself if I made the right mental choice.
The Internet has been abuzz with talk about the film, from it’s plot to arguments about sexism in the plot (www.vox.com/2015/6/16/8788641/jurassic-world-sexism).
Anyone who watched it would agree that the movie throws a steady string of thinly — if at all — veiled stereotypes at the audience in typical blockbuster fashion. In fact, nothing about the movie is all that new or different from other blockbusters. Much of it feels like a repackaged, freshly painted version of “Jurassic Park.”
The sexism criticisms are fairly simple: Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire is a stereotypical all-business woman, while Chris Pratt’s Owen is the stereotypical manly man. To spare spoilers, I’ll leave it at that.
Many have argued that these stereotypes make for many sexist subtexts; others have argued it’s just the characters. There’s even a joke about Jake Johnson’s geeky — and likable — character Lowery having to “act like a man for once,” but no one online has seemed to get all that worked up about it.
In hindsight, it’s all fairly glaring. But like I said, I mentally checked while watching the movie. For many like me, “Jurassic World” was a trip down memory lane. I saw the movie in theaters as a 6-year-old and remember being terrified by the scene with the raptors in the kitchen.
It would appear that most people didn’t care to think too much about the sexist undertones. “Jurassic World” had a monster opening weekend, raking in a worldwide $511.8 million, and it had a 7.6 out of 10 rating on IMDB.com as of Wednesday.
Reading about accusations of sexism in the plot made the lightbulb go off, and it made me conflicted. Part of me felt guilty about blindly enjoying the film and turning off my critical side; another part wondered why we can’t just enjoy a mindless blockbuster now and then without getting dragged into a debate.
At the end of the day, this is something every movie-goer has to decide on his or her own, but I’m likely going be a bit more critical the next time I’m in a movie theater.