"Ten Years Ago"
Siblings Sara and Jake are leaving their favourite arcade when Jake turns back for one last game. His eye is caught by a brand new game.
Meanwhile Sara is outside waiting for her brother...
Except he never shows up.
"Present day"
Sara and her BFFS Rae and Chrissy have finally achieved their dream of opening their own retro arcade and are just installing the very last game when they notice something weird. The game is designed for 4 players but it looks like somebody is already signed in and he looks very familiar...
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I am clearly a total mark for a DVD cover with a dinosaur on it as I continue to buy them despite one shoddy CGI mess after another. I also continue to be peeved by the ongoing tendency to use "Jurassic" as code for "It has a T. Rex in it" when every small child could tell you that Tyrannosaurus Rex was strictly a Late Cretaceous kinda dude.
As it turns out, this is not another attempt to rip of the Jurassic park Franchise. As the blurb on the back will even tell you, this is about 3 friends trying to survive after being sucked into a game. That would make it a knockoff of the Jumanji series.
The original title and DVD cover is much closer to what this film is all about.
Moving on to the film itself, I should start by saying this is by The Asylum. Expectations suitably adjusted.
Whereas Jumanji: Welcome to The Jungle was a hit because of it's talented cast, sterling character work, and expert blend of humour and, action, set to an entertaining storyline, the people behind this film clearly came away thinking the key was Karen Gillan in short shorts.
Which is why our female lead looks like this:
Pretty blatant but I will admit to being perfectly OK with it.
The next logical step would be to replace Dwayne Johnson, Chris Rock and Jack Black with suitable characters.
Or you could go "Fuckit" and have two more girls in shorts. Whatever.
Still not blatant enough?
Moving on,
The other thing you notice is that Rancala is actually a pretty rubbish game.
Our heroines wander about for a bit, encounter something dangerous which initially confuses them before defeating it with surprising ease. Repeat for the next level.
You will be pleased to know that there is at least one brief segment with a T. Rex. The rest of the time Sara, Rae and Chrisy are beating up white guys.- with one noticeable exception.
Oh look. It's a tornado that has sharks in it. Did I mention that this was made by The Asylum?
I will admit that somebody did try to have fun with the fight scenes.
It would have been nice if the fights had been better choreographed. Or done by people with some actual martial arts experience. Or had some interesting attacks like the ones you get in video games. What you get instead is some indifferent scrapping with videogame sound effects added.
TBH the scariest part of this whole film is Bai Ling shows up looking like she woke up in a skip after a Meth week and proceeds to chew the scenery like her life depended on it.
I'm not posting screenshots of that because I want the nightmares to stop.
So after all that, is Jurassic Island any good?
Well, for an Asylum knockoff this isn't too bad. The CGI is kept to a minimum which works out quite well, and although our heroines are obvious cliches who react like they've never played a video game in their lives Sara, Rae and Chrissy are easy to like. Normally in these things there's at least one person you want to get eaten but not here. YMMV obviously.
I did find myself losing interest towards the end, mainly because the story was too thin to support the film all the way to the end. Luckily a final punchup wrapped everything up just in time.
How much did I pay for this: £5
Was it worth it? Yes, with some reservations. Whoever decided to rename this to Jurassic island can fuck right off and there's some flaws with story, pacing, fight planning and overall lack of budget, but on the whole this DVD kept me mildly entertained. Expect little and you may be rewarded.
Friendship is Magic!
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