Jurassic World: Rebirth is schlocky, disposable fun. You’ll have forgotten it exists by next week.

Universal Pictures

Humanity has grown tired of dinosaurs, reads the opening crawl for Jurassic World: Rebirth. That may be true in the world of the movie, but in the real world, judging by the box office receipts, that’s far from the case. Despite diminishing artistic returns ever since the OG (and perfect) Jurassic Park hit theaters in 1993, these movies have continued turning a profit. Rebirth, as suggested by the title, is attempting to recapture audiences’ attention before we, like the dino ennui-stricken characters in the film, do indeed lose interest.

How, you may ask, does the movie attempt to do that? Haven’t we seen every revived dino and genetic hybrid this series could possibly offer us? To answer that, I’ll direct you to Rebirth’s genetic freak du jour: a Godzilla-sized lizard called Distortus Rex that sports a Megamind-esque cranium and two sets of arms (one pair big, the other teensy, traditional T-Rex limbs). That’s what you wanted, right? A giant, violent dinosaur with a weird flesh glob protruding from its skull? Surely it wasn’t, I dunno, well-developed characters, economical storytelling or original ideas.

All that aside, statistically speaking, you’re probably going to see this movie anyway, so it’s not a matter of whether or not you should see Jurassic World: Rebirth, but what kind of time you’re going to have when you do. To that end, this is a B-movie with a blockbuster budget. It’s not up to the legacy of the original (as if any of the other movies in this franchise are). However, it is the kind of movie where a character with dubious morals claims “I’m too smart to die,” and you know with 100% certainty that they’re going to bite it HARD in the finale.

It’s impossible not to have at least a little fun with that.

There are two plot threads in Rebirth. In the main one, mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) is hired by Pharma-bro Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) to take a team to the site of a former Jurassic World lab where a bunch of wild dinos still roam free and gather dinosaur blood to help make a groundbreaking treatment for heart disease. Her partners in this venture include sensitive scientist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) and her trusted pal Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali).

The B-plot concerns a family on a boat trip near that same former lab, which goes awry when a mosasaur sinks their craft. There’s gruff dad Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his two daughters Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Isabella (Audrina Miranda) and Teresa’s lame boyfriend (David Iacono). They mostly exist to appeal to younger audiences and make the run time longer.

As directed by Gareth Edwards (The Creator, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Godzilla, Monsters), Rebirth looks good, and does a serviceable job building connections between characters in an extreme setting — an area Edwards has always done well in. The movie is tense when it needs to be, and sweeping in all the right places. The film’s opening, which introduces the D-Rex, is a classic “science-gone-wrong” B-movie setup, calling back to the opening of the original film as well as vintage schlock like The Brain that Wouldn’t Die.

The script, by Jurassic Park scribe David Koepp, tries its damndest to recapture some of the magic, and in the spots where it hasn’t been noted to death by the studio, it almost succeeds. The Delgados absolutely do not need to be here, and their entire plot smacks of studio exec interference. Endless repetition of exposition (to make sure the dum-dum audience never loses track of what we’re doing) and the insertion of scenes that tie obviously and specifically back to moments in Jurassic Park slow down the momentum and are more likely to induce eyerolls than knowing nods.

I’m not going to go so far as to say Jurassic World: Rebirth sullies the legacy of the original Jurassic Park, because Jurassic Park is strong enough to withstand all the junk that followed in its wake.

For all its faults, Rebirth is still better than the other Jurassic World movies (a low, low bar indeed). It delivers enough thrills and spills to let you have fun over a holiday weekend. But in a week’s time, you’ll probably be hard-pressed to remember anything about it.