Review of Jurassic Park

Introduction

A monster hit in ’93, ‘Jurassic Park’ confirmed the status of Spielberg as the populist deity of modern cinema, and the universality of the marauding prehistoric critters to pull in the punters. With the second sequel in the chamber its time to regress back to the so called ‘good old days’ when ‘good’ blockbusters were the stuff of fun-filled Summers at the movies. Hmm…

Video

Very good. Given the film’s breakthrough status, the picture is as slick and imperfection free as expected.

Audio

Pretty stunning. Those T-Rex roars will echo in your brain for hours.

Features

Some nice extras here: great pre-production meetings, shot in gritty ‘hidden-cam vision’ showing Spielberg and his mates playing with toys. Natch. There’s also some fabulous Harryhausen-esque animatics showing the original animated creatures used as templates for the later CG elements. The 50 minute documentary is interesting, if a little formulaic. There are also the usual collection of storyboards (including some for deleted sequences) trailers, weblinks, photo galleries, production and cast/crew notes, and a handy dinosaur encyclopedia of use to precisely nobody. Pretty good.

Conclusion

A trio of eggheads (Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum) receive a once in a lifetime invite to billionaire John Hammond’s (an amusing Santa as Scottish capitalist performance by Richard Attenborough) groundbreaking theme park, which, after a worker is mauled to death by one of the vicious beasties, is being investigated by that pariah of all centrist Hollywood films: the lawyers. Here personified by vampiric, money-grabbing Martin Ferrero. There’s a couple of kids too. Anyway, moments after debating the pros and cons of premature-opportunistic-gene-screwage, the well-fed academics find themselves up s*** creek as disgruntled programming Zen Wayne Knight goes AWOL and leaves everyone on the dino infested island to rot. Or be eaten by the hungry sharp-toothed ones, now free to roam the premises, whichever happens to occur first, and since this is a Spielberg movie, nothing whatsoever is given time to decompose.

The shallowness and crude acting were to be expected (Dern’s scrappy, loose-jawed Princess Leia impression is a consistent hoot), but the sloppiness comes as a surprise. Spielberg proves himself wholly disinterested in anything not stamped ‘set-piece’ (and even there he seems to be more than a little distracted, did anyone say ‘Schindler’s List’?) The film’s best scene, a dinner-table discussion about could/should dilemma of DNA tomfoolery with a killer punchline, all but barely squirms through Spielberg’s apparently anti-subtext stranglehold. Samuel L. Jackson and B.D. Wong are the now obligatory token acts of pluralism (although as labrats, they don’t do so much as stand up). Goldblum is on hand to lighten the pretty square tone (just thank God Koepp got rid of most of Crichton’s senseless techno-babble) but the thing is basically a diverting, posture-soaked mess: the ‘set-pieces’ jaunt around with those usual, swooping Spielbergian kinetics, with none of the chaotic George Miller energy of ‘Raider’s and with little coherence (why does the T-rex pen suddenly turn into a cavernous valley allowing the jeep to drop down into it?) The monsters are quite good, the velociraptors in particular gutting, snarling, pouncing and screeching with prehistoric gusto. Sadly, the venomous but playful prankster ‘dilophosaurous’ barely gets a look in and Spielberg can’t help but turn big ol’ T-Rex into the grizzled goodie at the end, like some kind of toothy back-water Texan industrialist who’s king of the prairie. Eurgh.

All its embarrassing flaws aside, few could deny being stunned by Dennis Murin’s groundbreaking computer generated effects, astonishingly detailed and the primal shrieks on the lively and artfully sustained soundtrack are still bloodcurdling and, deservedly, Oscar-winning. As a technical feat then, ‘Jurassic Park’ is still impressive, and a genuine landmark. As a movie, it may be fun, but its still a dud: as dramatically anorexic as any Next-Gen cash-covered pot-boiler and as loose as Spielberg’s shoddiest follies. Its just as well the kitchen raptor kiddie hunt is an fist-clenching, teeth-chattering joy to behold, otherwise we’d be in real trouble. Perhaps the real problem is that we’ve seen all of Spielberg’s tricks before, and by this point he seems to be doing little more than saying boo to a ghost.