For all the ways that Jurassic Park changed the way we look at blockbuster filmmaking, the series hasn’t evolved much from its original premise. The whole formula can be pretty much boiled down to dinosaurs, moral quandaries, some comedy, and people being eaten. Some people might find the franchise stale after more than thirty years, but the success and failures of the series through seven cinematic entries mostly ebbs and flows with the execution of each individual film, not whether it actually brought anything new to the table.

Jurassic World Rebirth is not much of a rebirth. The plot is fairly simple. A covert team lands on an island full of dinosaurs to retrieve biomaterial samples that can potentially cure heart disease. Organized by the shady Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), the team also includes Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), a former military operative looking for a big payday to retire from being a mercenary, Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), a paleontologist upset that people don’t seem to care about dinosaurs anymore, and Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), the team leader and a friend of Nora.

Given the scummy nature of the core group, Rebirth throws in a family out on a sailing expedition for good measure. Father Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), daughters Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Isabella (Audrina Miranda), and Teresa’s boyfriend Xavier (David Iacano) were traveling around the island of Ile Saint-Hubert when their boat was shipwrecked by a mosasaurus. After some arguing among the mercenaries, Duncan rescues the civilians, bringing them along for the dangerous ride.

Director Gareth Edwards does an excellent job of pacing the paint-by-numbers thriller through all its expected twists and turns. The previous World movies borrowed heavily from the original Jurassic Park and its first sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, but left the final piece of the first trilogy largely alone. Though initially critically reviled, Jurassic Park III laid out a fairly solid guidebook for future installments with its standalone story that prioritized thrills over ethics.

Rebirth takes much of its cues from III, interjecting some philosophical quandaries into the equation as Bennett and Loomis clash with Krebs’ capitalistic intentions for their findings on the island. Original JP screenwriter David Koepp puts forth a competent script with a brisk runtime of 133-minutes, which unfortunately leaves little time for character development. Johansson has great chemistry with Bailey and Ali, but none of them are fully fleshed out characters.

Jurassic World Dominion similarly struggled with a bloated cast, juggling the cast of the new trilogy with the trio of returnees. Rebirth handles this dynamic better than Dominion, largely by streamlining all human interaction into a collection of easily digestible cliches. Its methodology is a little rudimentary at times, but the results deliver more than any of the entries of the new trilogy.

Koepp’s script struggles with its awkward humor. The movie isn’t funny at all, but the cast does a great job selling the idea that you’re supposed to care about these people, aside from the obvious dinosaur fodder. Miranda, the youngest member of the cast, shines with her relationship with a baby Dilophosaurus she named Dolores.

Edwards delivers with the action sequences. Water was famously a challenge for the original film’s production thirty years ago. Rebirth supplies plenty of genuinely thrilling water scenes that mostly make you forget how generic this whole experience is. The new bioengineered dinosaurs are a little cartoonish, but that’s also to be expected by now in this franchise.

Jurassic World Rebirth brings nothing new to the table, but Edwards’ competent direction steers the ship away from familiar criticisms. People have been saying that the franchise is played out since The Lost World. The constant presence of John Williams’ score hardly helps, reminding the audience of better days when these movies had something new to say. The original movie already masterfully covered the ethical dilemmas at play in every subsequent installment. This film is great fun for people who thought III got a bad rap.

While there doesn’t appear to be any great intellectualism left to be mined from this franchise, Rebirth is solid popcorn entertainment. The paint-by-numbers approach won’t appeal to many Spielberg fans, but there’s a lot of fun to be had watching one-dimensional people run away from CGI abominations. The dinosaurs and the audience deserve better than this corporate content masquerading as cinema, but it’s far from the worst way to spend an evening.