Three years after the destruction of the Jurassic World theme park, Owen Grady and Claire Dearing return to the island of Isla Nublar to save the remaining dinosaurs from a volcano that's about to erupt.

They soon encounter terrifying new breeds of dinosaurs, whist uncovering a conspiracy that threatens the entire planet.....

I was so happy with Jurassic World when released in 2015. It somehow caught some of the magic that was so crucial to the ground breaking first movie. So despite the maundering trailers, the poor one sheets, and an air of excitement that seemed as sparse as when JP3 was released, my expectations were pretty high for this.

And why shouldn't they have been? Here we have a great director, the chemistry between Pratt and Howard made JW much more than just a reboot to a much loved masterpiece.

But no, this has to be one of the most disappointing films not just of this summer, but of any summer since that magical one of 1993.

It just takes everything that worked with JW, and extracted it and added elements that just made the film almost unbearable to endure. Yes, the efects are amazing, and the opening scene is decidedly quite effective, but when we get to the charachters proper, you can see the lack chemistry that was so important in the last chapter.

Pratt looks bored on the verge of saying 'Am I the biggest star in the world yet?', and Howard is resorted to nothing more than a bolshy babysitter for the children in the film.

The film has a gothic element to it toward the final act, when we meet Jones and his prehistoric auction. But one couldn't help but hark back to 2008's 'Taken' where we see Neeson compelling his next victim to bid for his daughter.

It's a crying shame that the film goes for the lazy route and resorts to nothing but the cast running away from clouds of smoke and panicking dinosaurs.

And if you didn't already know, if you've seen the trailer, you've seen Goldblum's appearance.

A turgid, lazy film, easily one of the worst of the year.

How many times can they repackage the same old formula? Find another dumb reason to: -- Go back to the island.

-- Wow, look, dinos! Aren't they...still...amazing?

-- Dinos chase humans scenes.

-- Evil person tries to implement exploitive agenda.

-- Dinos eat some people and roar.

-- Don't forget the dino eyeball close up!

-- Will the main characters survive to make yet another movie? Perhaps, as I see one is slated for 2022. And yep, I'll probably watch it as I've seen them all.

The tension and thrill of the original has never been replicated and nothing new is really ever brought to the table in terms of story or thrill. These must still just rake in the cash.

For decades, movie dinosaurs were realised either by some form of puppetry or stop motion animation. Then, in 1993, Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park proved to be a game changer, amazing audiences with realistic prehistoric monsters created inside a computer. The problem since then has been in delivering that 'wow factor' - how can Hollywood keep on thrilling audiences when Spielberg's original set the bar so high? To be honest, I don't think they've found the answer yet.

The special effects in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom are technically brilliant, but the film doesn't really do anything that we haven't seen before, making the film as a whole yet another underwhelming experience. In desperation, the film-makers have resorted to more outrageous set-pieces, as well as inventing bigger and badder dinosaurs that never actually existed, all of which requires way too much suspension of disbelief.

And talking of pushing the boundaries of believability too far, the notion that velociraptors were intelligent enough to be trained is quite preposterous: they had pea brains, experts rating their intelligence on a par with a rabbit. Anyone stupid enough to try and become a veloci-whisperer would wind up as a meal for the ravenous lizard (except, of course, for the fact that velociraptors were, in reality, only the size of a large chicken!).

Other things that had me rolling my eyes: Chris Pratt becoming an MMA fighter to plough his way through countless bad guys; a dinosaur that pretends to be asleep to catch someone off-guard; velociraptor Blue knowing only to attack the villains; the transportation of numerous ginormous dinosaurs to a mansion in the US without the knowledge of the authorities; and obligatory child Maisie (Isabella Sermon) ultimately releasing the captured beasts into the wild because she feels sorry for them. Duh!

5.5/10 for the special effects, rounded down to 5 for annoying comedy-relief tech-geek Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) and for Toby Jones. There's never an excuse for Toby Jones.