65 (2023)    Columbia/Sci-Fi-Action-Thriller    RT: 93 minutes    Rated PG-13 (intense sci-fi action and peril, brief bloody images)    Director: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods    Screenplay: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods    Music: Chris Bacon    Cinematography: Salvatore Totino    Release date: March 10, 2023 (US)    Cast: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Nika King.    Box Office: $32.1M (US)/$60.7M (World)

Rating: ***

 I, for one, am glad to see B-movies making something of a comeback. The movies I enjoyed the most so far this year are M3GAN and Cocaine Bear. Call it blasphemy but I liked them better than most of this year’s Oscar nominees. Yes, that includes the highly overrated Everything Everywhere All at Once, the one most likely to sweep the awards on March 12. The latest in what I hope brings about a rediscovery of the joys of B-movies is 65, a silly sci-fi adventure that plays like a blend of Jurassic Park and The Martian. It’s made to be watched on Saturday afternoons.

 Adam Driver, you might know him as Kylo Ren from the Star Wars sequels, plays Mills, a spacecraft pilot charged with taking a bunch of people to some unknown destination. The mission will take two years meaning he’ll he separated from his family that whole time. It sucks, but he needs the money in order to afford medical treatment for his ailing daughter (Coleman, My Spy). En route to his destination, his ship enters an asteroid field and gets completely FUBAR. All but one of the passengers get killed when their cryogenic chambers go flying off into space. He crash-lands on a planet that turns out to be Earth circa 65 million years ago. That would explain the dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures running around.

 The other survivor is a little girl named Koa (Greenblatt, In the Heights) who doesn’t speak English. Mills doesn’t understand her language either. They need to get off that planet ASAP. The only way to do that is to make their way up the mountain where the escape pod landed. Not only do they have to deal with prehistoric beasts that want to kill them, there’s the whole communication barrier thing. Then to top it all off, Mills finds out that an asteroid (yes, that ONE!) is heading towards them. He and the kid have to get away before everything goes KABOOM!

 I wasn’t looking for a deep analysis of the human condition when I signed on for 65. I was just looking for a fun matinee flick to take me away from reality for 90+ minutes. It seems like movies are getting longer and longer all the time. There’s no reason for some of them to go on for two and a half hours or more. It’s nice to see a movie that tells its story in a short time frame. Granted, there are some pacing issues early on, but it gets pretty good once it gets going.

 65 has a few other flaws. It doesn’t lean into the silliness of its premise as much as it should. It tries to inject serious drama about family and coping with loss. It makes for an uneven ride. Also, you never really get the sense that Mills bonds with Koa. He protects her from danger. She shows him that she has pluck and courage when it matters. That’s about it. Another thing, I wish Driver had camped it up more, A LOT MORE. He underplays his character when he should be hamming it up to the skies. He should be totally freaked out by being chased by dinosaurs.

 Okay, so 65 isn’t a perfect movie, but it’s entertaining. It has plenty of action and thrills although none of it is anything we haven’t seen before in any of the Jurassic movies. The special effects, an uneven mix of CGI and animatronics, are pretty good. I must admit I like seeing cheesy-looking creatures in movies. It takes me right back to the dumb movies I used to watch on UHF channels on weekends during my misspent youth. I also like the idea of the whole movie taking place in the distant past. You see, the human characters are NOT from some futuristic society. The movie, written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (writers of A Quiet Place), suggests an ancient advanced civilization on another planet. Yes, we’re talking about intelligent life in the universe. I wish the writers did more with this idea.

 I pretty much got what I hoped for from 65, a good time at the movies. It’s almost as fun as watching a robot doll or coked-up bear going berserk. Forget all the superhero epics and elevated horror crap. I want more movies like this.