Jurassic Park (1993)

DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg

CAST: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Ariana Richards, Joseph Mazzello, Martin Ferrero, Bob Peck, Wayne Knight, Samuel L. Jackson

REVIEW:

Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, adapted from the book by Michael Crichton, is a tremendous special effects landmark, throwing up dinosaurs onscreen that are so realistic that at times it’s hard to believe they’re special effects creations. In fact, so impressive is the film on a technical level that it’s easy to forgive the serviceable but unspectacular narrative and thinly-drawn characters. At the bottom line, the story is just a vehicle to string dinosaur scenes together, and does an effective job of serving its purpose. Jurassic Park succeeds because it promises dinosaurs, and it delivers dinosaurs beyond anything ever before seen onscreen.

Off the coast of Costa Rica, the eccentric and wealthy John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has leased an island on which to construct a most unconventional animal preserve/theme park giving people something they’ve never seen before: actual living, breathing dinosaurs, genetically resurrected from excavated DNA preserved in fossilized mosquitoes frozen in amber. But when Hammond’s investors and their representative, jittery lawyer Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) are dubious about safety—concerns justified by a “mishap” in the movie’s prologue—Hammond brings in three experts to inspect and hopefully endorse the park: surly paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), his professional and romantic partner, paleo-botanist Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and cynical mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), who’s already convinced the park is an accident waiting to happen. Upon arrival, the group is awed to witness Hammond’s creations in the flesh. But, as will surprise no one who’s seen this kind of movie before, wonder will soon enough turn to terror, when an unscrupulous employee (Wayne Knight) turns off the power and the dinosaurs break loose, forcing Grant, Ellie, Malcolm, and Hammond’s two grandchildren Lex (Ariana Richards) and Tim (Joseph Mazzello) into a struggle for survival.

As usual in these kinds of movies, the pseudo-science in Jurassic Park is unlikely at best, but the movie takes the time and effort to play us a whole pseudo-documentary about its science that does an effective job of making itself sound credible. In fact, the movie arguably spends a laborious amount of time on set-up and takes a long time to get going. Despite author Michael Crichton being credited as a co-screenwriter alongside David Koepp, the movie is a fairly loose adaptation of Crichton’s novel, but its problems of uneven pacing and poorly-developed characters are transferred from page to screen. In fairness, the movie does make some improvements. The movie gives us a better, more exciting, less anti-climactic finale than the book, even if it falls back on a deus ex machina to save the day. There’s a noteworthy dinner table debate/confrontation between Ellie and Hammond. Lex and Tim have swapped some character traits; Tim is still the dinosaur lover, but their ages have been flipped around, and it’s Lex, not Tim, who’s the computer whiz.

But while the narrative and characters are adequate, few would dispute that the dinosaurs are the real “stars”, and they’re a tremendous achievement of Industrial Light and Magic’s Stan Winston, Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett, and Michael Lantieri, combining animatronics, CGI, and even a full-size full motion animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Spielberg’s directorial magic touch is fully in effect, treating the dinosaurs’ first appearances with a sense of wonder and grandeur that makes them—depending on the species—both awe-inspiring and intimidating. With the minor exceptions of a couple iffy moments, the dinosaurs are so astonishingly real that at times one is almost tempted to believe the filmmakers really did somehow create flesh-and-blood dinosaurs and throw them up onscreen. And who doesn’t get a thrill when the T-Rex—heralded ominously by water quaking at its approach—breaks out of its paddock to menace two powerless electric cars and the humans trapped inside, or when Lex and Tim have their cat-and-mouse game with the even more dangerous Velociraptors (the Raptors are way smaller than the T-Rex, but also much more clever). And Spielberg also shows a more benevolent side to the dinosaur menagerie, in a distinctly Spielbergian scene where humans sheltering high in a treetop have a tranquil interlude with the gentle giant Brachiosaurus.

The cast is fairly low-key (the lead went to lower-profile Sam Neill after previous Spielberg leading man Harrison Ford turned it down) and this isn’t an actors’ movie, but the cast gamely plays along with material in which, let’s face it, everyone knows the dinosaurs are the main attraction and the real “stars”. Sam Neill and Laura Dern do a good job selling Grant and Ellie’s affection and easy chemistry in their establishing scene (a change from the book, where they were not romantically involved), and Neill has enough gravitas to sell both staring awestruck at dinosaurs as if he’s really seeing them, and holding down the thin “human interest” plotline of grumpy child-hating Grant grudgingly bonding with Lex and Tim once they’re thrust into his lap (the kids are a little annoying, but not as much as they could have been; Ariana Richards’ got a strong set of lungs). Jeff Goldblum does what he does best, act quirky and drop sarcastic one-liners (“yes but John, when the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists”). The book’s Hammond is greedy and callous, but as softened by the script, and as played by the twinkly-eyed Richard Attenborough, he’s a sympathetic, albeit eccentric figure. The remaining cast members are defined by one basic character trait: Bob Peck is the cool, collected warden Muldoon, Martin Ferrero is the cynical lawyer Gennaro, Wayne Knight is the greedy Nedry who serves as the catalyst for the turn of events, and Samuel L. Jackson is the control center’s supervisor who spends his limited role chain-smoking, staring at monitors, and saying things like “hold on to your butts”.

Jurassic Park‘s thin narrative is little more than a skeletal framework to string assorted dinosaur scenes together, but few will come to a movie like this looking for deep characters and a complex plotline. They come to ooh and aah and get on the edge of their seats, and the movie, aided by its unimpeachable special effects work, does an effective job of providing those moments. In the end, Jurassic Park promises dinosaurs, and it delivers with flying colors, and packages it all with nothing more and nothing less than good entertainment.

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