ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Has your family grown weary of crowded theme packs with boat rides which slowly float passed rubbery robot pirates and plastic jungle animals that roar on cue from the bushes?

Well, we’ve got good news! Here’s a vacation spot you’ll remember for the rest of you life — assuming you survive.
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Jurassic Park (1993)

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______________________ Jurassic Park Trailer


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This was a true event picture — maybe one of the last ones. They made a big deal of this one on opening night — there was a lot of anticipation and people went in droves. Before Titanic, this was the big one — a mammoth hit, a box office monster, a return for Spielberg to the glory days of Jaws and E.T.

Based on the best seller by Michael Crichton, this details how several key experts (Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum) are invited to check out and critique the new and unusual amusement park on the island of John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), a billionaire with a playful side (sort of the nineties version of Walt Disney).

Only Hammond has chosen to be playful with real dinosaurs — new cloning technology has enabled Hammond and his scientists to recreate the creatures from the DNA blood stored in prehistoric mosquitoes which have been frozen in amber.

Goldblum's Ian Malcolm, a mathematician into chaos theory, is the first to voice concerns even before any troubles begin.

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Unfortunately for all involved, Ian's worst fears are realized — and it doesn't help that one of Hammond's employees (Wayne Knight) is unscrupulous, secretly working for a competitor. He sabotages the park's security system during a storm and exposes all the guests and workers still there, including Hammond's grandchildren (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello), to the danger of the predatory beasts, notably the raptors and a T-Rex.

It's up to dino expert Alan Grant (Neill) to guide the two kids to safety. Other characters on the island are not so lucky (includes a lawyer (Martin Ferrero), a game warden (Bob Peck) and Samuel L. Jackson as a computer tech guy just before he became a big star in Pulp Fiction '94). The standout performance is from Goldblum; his timing is great and he has several very amusing lines. Neill and Dern are on the flat, boring side of things.

___Jurassic Park - Welcome to Jurassic Park Scene


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The most intriguing portion of all this is the discovery by Grant that the dinosaurs have managed to reproduce, even though part of the cloning process was meant to prevent that — it suggests that things would have gone awry eventually even without a saboteur.

Spielberg had lost some of his edge by this time (it happened during the eighties) and the first half of this film is a bit too easygoing and slow. Spielberg also peppers the story with those moments meant to inspire awe, but he overdoes it — the primary example is when Grant sees his first live dinosaur.

The audience is meant to share in this awe, but Spielberg batters the audience over the head with it, drawing it out until it's too saccharine. Some scenes are plain dull (Dern & Attenborough sitting eating ice cream). But this is offset by the truly thrilling moments, especially effective in a movie theater.

The first appearance of the T-Rex (the FX are so good that it looked to me like Spielberg had managed to find a real dinosaur for the role). Also noteworthy is the scene of the impact tremors and the monster's reappearance and chase of the jeep, along with all the scenes with the raptors, which are the ultimate predators.

BoG's Score: 8 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)