“Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (Season Two)” Netflix Review by Josh Davis : Pop Culture Leftovers

“Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (Season Two)” Netflix Review by Josh Davis

February 7, 2021 5:51 am |

Season one of Netflix’s “Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous” was something of a pleasant surprise.

Initially, it seemed like a cutesy, made-for-young-children adaptation of the popular dino property originally written by Michael Crichton, and then adapted into several mega blockbusters, first by Steven Spielberg and more recently by Colin Trevorrow. Picture early “Toy Story,” but with a small group of teens having fun in a theme park full of reanimated dinosaurs in captivity – before all hell breaks loose.

Admittedly, I scoffed at the show and turned it off early into the first episode, but was later convinced to give it another shot and — what do you know — there’s a very good, gripping, and at times quite scary show that’s largely faithful to the tone of the property.
In “Camp Cretaceous,” six teenagers are chosen as the inaugural guests of a new camp housed at Jurassic World on the remote island of Isla Nublar.

By the end of season one, the island has been evacuated because of the events of the “Jurassic World” film — the dinosaurs escaped from their habitats and started eating the guests. Which, coincidentally, is essentially the premise of every “Jurassic” movie.

The voice cast is made up of mostly young, unknown actors, including Paul-Mikél Williams as dinosaur fanatic Darius Bowman, Sean Giambrone as the shy and sensitive Ben Pincus, Kausar Mohammed as the star athlete Yasmina “Yaz” Fadoula, Jenna Ortega as famous vlogger Brooklynn, Ryan Potter as rich kid Kenji Kon, and Raini Rodriguez as the bubbly and enthusiastic Sammy Gutierrez.

The show was developed by Zack Stentz, whose previous credits include writing duties on “Thor” and “X-Men: First Class,” as well as on TV shows like “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” “Fringe” and “The Flash.”

Season two picks up with five of the six youngsters still stranded. One, Ben, is missing and presumed dead after a shocking scene involving a steep fall from a monorail and an encounter with a hungry Pteranodon.

The first episode is a lot of fun, with the gang spending much of their time in the abandoned commerce square of Jurassic World. They goof on cardboard cutout ads of Brooklyn selling phone chargers, play with dino-shaped wallow talkies, try and reconstitute brick-hard frozen pizza, and realize that virtually everything in the square doubles as something else. The rocks are trash cans and soap dispensers, and the vines are actually electrical cords.

In a way, there’s a bit of post-apocalyptic “Breakfast Club” bonding and blowing off steam going on, and it’s a needed break for the characters after everything they’ve been through.
Fun and games aside, they can’t find a way to restore power or communicate with the outside world, and the area — like the entire island — is still overrun by hungry, man-eating dinosaurs.

By episode four the kids have even more company, this time in the form of eco-tourists Mitch and Tiff (Bradley Whitford of “The West Wing” and Stephanie Beatriz of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) and their security detail, Hap (Angus Sampson from “Mad Max: Fury Road”).

In classic Jurassic fashion, the newcomers have ulterior motives of stealing dinosaur parts to use as big-game trophies. The film franchise has explored this concept extensively, most recently with Ken Wheatley stealing dinosaur teeth in “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” and before that in “The Lost World,” with Roland Tembo’s big game hunter.

When the kids smell a rat, they use the survival skills they’ve picked up over the course of a season and a half (or roughly two-to-three months since coming to the island) to protect the dinosaurs from the eco tourists.

That’s a bit of a letdown, as the dinosaurs themselves were the villains of season one – and scary ones at that. The grownups just aren’t that intimidating by comparison.

A few episodes later, a familiar face from the season one returns … and things fall off the rails just a little. Without spoiling too much, the returning character goes full Rambo, and makes Owen’s motorcycle chase with velociraptors from “Jurassic World” look downright dull in comparison.

Sure, it’s a kids’ show on a fictional island filled with genetically engineered sci-fi dinosaurs, but “Camp Cretaceous” up to that point had mostly adhered to the themes and tone of the films.

Minor gripes aside, there are plenty of thrills, some endearing storylines featuring a well-developed main cast of characters, and lots of cool dinosaurs wreaking havoc. Speaking of which, while the animation of the kids isn’t particularly notable, the renderings of the dinosaurs is very, very good — perhaps because the Jurassic team had already perfected bringing them back digitally in the movies.

Season two overall is a good enough successor to the first season, even if it does get a little hokey at times. And the ending leaves the door wide open for perhaps a final season, as yet unannounced by Netflix.

Fans of the “Jurassic” franchise who have yet to jump on the show ought to give it a shot, especially with “Jurassic World: Dominion” still more than a year away from releasing in theaters. It might take a few episodes to get hooked but, overall, it’s a fast watch (at roughly three hours per season) that does manage to deepen the mythology of the films.

The kids stranded on the island, despite their differences, become a family that forms the heart of the show, and it’s easy to get attached and care for them. That, and the level of dinosaur violence and mayhem is shockingly high for a show that initially looked like it was made for kindergarteners.

PCL Rating: Taste It

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: FRESH