Fast-paced, character-driven, filled with spectacle and heart, Jurassic World is a surprisingly intimate coming of age saga for both its adult and adolescent characters alike, building to a suitably heart-pounding bit of creature-based carnage that is almost certain to illicit cheers from the majority of the audience.

As I get older, my love for The Last Unicorn only seems to grow.

Thank Your Lucky Stars might not be a great musical, but that doesn’t make it any less wonderful, and as an old Hollywood artifact of a bygone era of big screen entertainment that’s disappeared forever it’s a fantastically fun smorgasbord of silliness worthy of celebration.

Far more cerebral than you initially expect it to be, this intimate, claustrophobic thriller takes its time to explode into the expected violence and mayhem involving the titular creatures, and as such becomes far more meaningful, and memorable, than it otherwise would have been had the filmmaker chosen a different path.

I like the aggressive machismo fueling the film, a trait Dujardin isn’t afraid of embracing. He’s a tornado tearing through the proceedings with fearless ferocity, becoming some sort of carnivorous, chain-smoking combination of Humphrey Bogart, Gene Hackman and Jean-Paul Belmondo all rolled into one.

Fans of that sort of thing, and of the characters themselves, will certainly rejoice. As for everyone else, while not going to hate their time sitting in the theater, they’re certainly going to wonder what all the fuss is about because, as far as I can tell, this is much ado about nothing, nothing at all.

The central scenario might be overly familiar, and I honestly can’t say Whannell’s film doesn’t do a darn thing that isn’t unexpected, but forgive me if, somewhat surprisingly, I kind of liked this prequel.

As perceptive as all of this might be it’s just as equally slight, Bujalski playing it somewhat safe as things reach their conclusion. But the movie is constantly entertaining nonetheless, Corrigan, Smulders and Pearce all working in sensational tandem allowing the filmmaker’s themes and ideas to come to life with delightful enthusiasm.

[This] is McCarthy’s showcase and she more than delivers. While no one would ever give her an Academy Award for this performance that doesn’t make her any less perfect. She gives Spy its reason to exist, McCarthy hitting the comedic bull’s-eye so frequently she doesn’t so much deserve an Oscar as she does an Olympic Gold Medal.