Review: 'Jurassic World Rebirth' is a cold-blooded clone in which wonder has gone extinct

Hold on to your water glasses because you can hear the plot of “Jurassic World Rebirth” coming from a mile away.A ragtag group of adventurers land on a remote island planning to exploit dinosaur DNA — and some of them get chomped.

The only new thing about this seventh installment is the cast: Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali as freelance covert operatives Zora and Duncan, Jonathan Bailey as paleontologist Henry Loomis and Rupert Friend as a pharmaceutical titan named Martin who wants to treat coronary disease by harvesting samples from three massive reptile hearts.Gauging by the response every time this sequel has come up in conversation, it should have been subtitled: “This Time There’s No Chris Pratt.”I went to the theater with my own heart as big as a Titanosaur’s.

(Goofy name aside, it’s a real herbivore and you’ll see a herd of them.) After all, screenwriter David Koepp wrote the screenplay for the 1993 origina and the franchise’s latest director, Gareth Edwards, made a serviceable “Godzilla.” Alas, Edwards has made “Godzilla” again.“Jurassic World Rebirth” is a straight monster movie with zero awe or prestige.

It’s incurious about its stomping creatures and barely invested in the humans either, tasking Johansson and most of the cast to play fairly similar shades of hardy and determined.You’ll see a nod to the 1962 adventure “One Million Years B.C.” (you know: Raquel Welch, fur bikini), which is more of a template than a kitschy joke.

There isn’t a shiver of surprise about who gets the chomp, only disappointment that the fatalities are so bloodless — they’re mild even for PG-13.Some of this ennui is by design.

The narrative backdrop is that after 32 years of who-coulda-thunk-it rampages, humankind is tired of dealing with the darned things.Audiences can relate.To establish this miserliness of spirit, the present day scenes start with a Brooklyn traffic jam caused by an escaped sauropod laying collapsed an...