65 (2023)

“65” should be the number of minutes this movie ran instead of 1 hour and 33 minutes.

At it’s core this is Jurassic Park with space travellers and no Dino DNA…just the real thing or at least decent CGI.

The makers of “Quiet Place” are behind this picture set 65 million years ago on earth when dinosaurs of all periods roamed our planet apparently.

Even before Sir David Attenborough narrated his first documentary.

Directors/Writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods team up with “Star Wars” Adam Driver as the pilot of a spaceship carrying passengers in stasis that crash land on a remote planet after surviving an unexpected Meteor Shower.

As if intergalactic weathermen could be any more accurate than the fancy clowns on the nightly news in 2023.

Driver as “Mills” naturally is the only survivor, until he discovers a young passenger named “Koa” (Ariana Greenblatt) and together they set out on a journey by foot to reach an Escape Pod some 15 miles away.

“Koa” by the way means “Warrior” in Hawaiian…which she proves to be as they deal with pre-historic predators…even making a cool spear.

Along the way they encounter all sorts of nasty bugs and life forms in all shapes and sizes that want to eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

“65” is more “After Earth” than “Jurassic Park”…although it steals scenes from both with a little “Kong: Skull Island” & “Deep Impact” thrown in.

I’m no palaeontologist like “Ross” from “Friends”, but I’m pretty sure not all the animal and plant life in this movie is accurate to the Cretaceous Period this movie is set in before the giant asteroid more than 10 kilometres across impacted into a shallow ocean and penetrated the Earth’s crust down to a depth of several kilometres.

Even knowing all of this is coming at a velocity of 25 kilometres per second “Will” and “Koa” still have time for a deep and meaningful chat prior to blasting off from this Monster infested planet.

Fun Fact: The warning sound made by the ship’s computer just after the crash was first used 70 years ago as the sound effect for the Martian walkers, in the 1953 Paramount production of “War of the Worlds.” The trailers (as usual) showed all the good bits in advance.

A good April Holiday movie for young families that’s more Apocalypse Park than Jurassic.