Jurassic World Rebirth review: Another embarrassing dino retread

Running time: 134 minutes.Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of violence/action, bloody images, some suggestive references and language).

In theaters July 2.Sixty-five million years.That is how long the “Jurassic” film series has been schlepping along. I am quite certain of this.The audience is positively fossilized by the end of the seventh movie: “Jurassic World Regurgitation.” Sorry.“Rebirth.” It’s “Rebirth.”What a misleading title.

The once-great franchise is hardly reborn from the amber this time.It’s slammed by an asteroid yet again.The sheer inanity of “Retread”’s exposition is remarkable.We’re informed that, during the past five years, humanity has grown weary of dinosaurs.

Bored, tired, over it.Ten-ton ferocious lizards are spoken of like fidget spinners or Palm Pilots.And, in this half-decade, the previously extinct beasts came to the stark realization that North America does not have the ideal climate for them. Even though just one horrible movie ago they were excitedly galloping through the Great Plains.So, like Canadians in winter, they’ve mostly headed down to the equator.Per the usual schtick, some unlikable morons must jet from New York City to some perilous tropical island, even though they obviously shouldn’t. The dumb-dumbs du jour are Scarlett Johansson’s Zora, some sort of calculating mercenary, and Jonathan Bailey, as an exceedingly rare male model paleontologist named Henry.

A pyrite Goldblum.  These folks, some of the blandest characters in the entire “Jurassic” series, will be paid $10 million to secure blood samples from the most massive air, water and land dinosaurs.Big Pharma needs the vials to cure heart disease. Extraordinary.To kick off their journey on a chipper note, Zora and team leader Duncan (Mahershala Ali) somberly reminisce about their dead friends and family members.

The depressing scene does not succeed in making us like them.In fact, it made me miss Téa Leoni from “Jurassic Pa...