Review of Jurassic Park (1993) by Mrmoviebuff — 17 Jul 2015

Even after 20-something years, Steven Spielberg's 'Jurassic Park' is still an incredible blockbuster, filled with gorgeous visual effects that still hold up today.

The movie focuses on a park that was created by John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), who, as author Michael Cricheton described as a "dark Walt Disney" and three experts, played by Sam Neil, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum respectively explore the park, and then run into some consequences.

The movie mostly focuses on Sam Neil's character, Alan, saving John Hammond's grandson and granddaughter from the gigantic T-Rex throughout the entire movie.

What this movie is very good at is suspense and Spielberg uses it effectively. One scene that stands out the most is when the characters are in the cars and the grandson, Tim, hears thudding from a distance. He looks at the glasses of water on the dashboard and sees them shaking, and we get a close-up shot of this as it happens for a while. This is obviously a sign that a dinosaur is approaching and Spielberg is good at putting the audience on edge.

I guess the movie's only flaw would be the way the human characters are used throughout the film. The dinosaurs are the main stars here, and by "dinosaurs" I mean the special effects, which still look terrific. The human characters are there to make the dinosaurs look even scarier to the audience by looking up in awe and/or fear and screaming to the top of their lungs. Spielberg doesn't use many surprises to show us the dinosaurs as we see them early and throughout the duration of the film, so to keep them looking scary, make the human characters look even smaller and make them scream, this is not a gimmick, but it's a tiny flaw.

Other than this, you get great looking dinosaurs, great suspense and a great time at the movies filled with some neat action and some touching moments. 'Jurassic Park' is a joy to behold.