Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous Review!

Alright! Today I am reviewing one of the only franchise continuations of 2020 - Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, an animated Netflix show set in Jurassic World. 

The show is about these six kids, none of whose names you'll remember but ones that I'll list anyway - Darius Bowman, Ben Pincus, Yasima "Yaz" Fadoula, Brooklynn, Kenji Kon, and Sammy Gutirrez. Let it be known that I genuinely despise all of these characters. They're offensive Gen Z stereotypes at best. They're the type of multiracial, ethnically diverse group that a bunch of 40 something writers comes up with to appeal to kids. And I caught on immediately and hated it. 

The first thing I notice is the main character. Darius Bowman, a 12-year-old black dinosaur fanatic. He's supposedly the main character, but over the course of the show, he just kind of devolves into a background character. He has a few emotional beats, but nothing too special. 

Then we got Ben Pincus, who is the stereotypical "Frail white nerd" of the show, because a Jurassic Park movie wouldn't be complete without a scaredy-cat nerd. 

The animation for the show was pretty good. 

Brooklynn is a young white female social media personality with pink hair. If you're imagining how broad of a stereotype that is for Gen-Z, you are right. "Kid's like social media, right?" And in the first few episodes, I just wanted her to shut up. She's got the "Leave, like, and comment! See you next episode!" type of thing going on, and I just wanted silence. Luckily, she's fleshed out enough by the end of the series to qualify as a character. 

Kenji Kon was my least favorite character of the show, by far. He's a self-entitled rich Asian kid, who is constantly getting in trouble and getting others to bail him out of it. His backstory offers little substance other than "My dad doesn't talk to me." He's only punished for his recklessness once, and even then he gets out of it! He goes on an adventure with Darius! 

Now we have the body-positive Mexican character, Sammy Gutirrez, who I thoroughly disliked. And even though she was Mexican, she almost had what sounded like a Southern drawl combined with a Mexican accent. It was very strange. 

The last character is "Yaz" Fadoula, the South Asian athletic loner kid. She's, like, barely in the show. She's probably my third favorite human character just because she doesn't have anything going actively against her.

The characters were definitely the worst part of the show.

My absolute favorite human character was a camp counselor named Dave. He was just a camp counselor freaking out and making up for it with overconfidence. I liked it. 

I hope you got a pretty good mental image of the show's characters. And not only are the characters bland, so are their outfits. It's the routine bright ensemble we've grown accustomed to in a children's cartoon. 

The series is very light on character arcs, themes, or any type of... emotion. Don't come in here expecting Avatar-level feels. But, you know where the series does shine? 

The dinosaurs.

The first few episodes were extremely vague about the specific place of this show in the Jurassic Park franchise, so when the loose Indominus Rex shows up and starts chomping on park workers, I was really excited. Often times, kid shows that have violence are a lot more mature and enjoyable than most shows - stuff like Avatar, the DCAU, Tron: Uprising, Clone Wars, and even the X-Men cartoons. Showing violence means that they trust their audience enough to understand (Or at least enjoy) more mature themes. 

Not that this show has any themes or anything, just a surprising amount of carnage for a kid's show. 

When you first watch it, you think it's standard kid fodder. But then that I-Rex shows up and starts chomping people up and your attention is grabbed. From there, we also get to see the death of Simon Masrani once again and a frankly disturbing scene in which a park worker betrays the kids, steals their van, and is promptly smashed and eaten by the Indominus. I liked that part. 

I liked everything with dinosaurs. Basically, any scene where the kids were in danger of being killed, I really liked. Maybe that says a lot about how much I liked the characters. 

I liked it when the kids almost died. It made me happy on the inside.

But, other than the ever redeeming quality of TV-PG violence, the series actually did two things very well: Set pieces and Bumpy.

By set pieces, I mean where the action took place. We got a lot of exciting set pieces where we've never seen set pieces before - In the middle of the Mosasourus cage, on a zip line, in a treehouse- so many cool action set pieces that could bring you to the edge of your seat. 

As for Bumpy, Bumpy is a baby ankylosaurus that I absolutely adored. He stole every scene he was in. 

The breakout character of the show - Bumpy.

And those three positives: Carnage, Action Set Pieces, and Bumpy - CAB if you will - created an above-average kid's show that I'm pretty excited to see a second season from next Summer. 

Overall, I give Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous a 7/10. "Although by no means perfect in terms of characterization or emotion, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous impresses through relentless carnage and one adorable baby ankylosaurus."

This was some mega dope concept art.