Review of Jurassic Park (1993) by Stevenf — 02 Feb 2013

In a generation where Jurassic Park was the pinnacle of CGI, its hard not to admire this thrilling and suspenseful adventure, but there are stumbling blocks which stopped this film from reaching its full potential.

When a wealthy visionary (Richard Attenborough) needs expert approval before he can open is state of the art biological theme park, he turns to palaeontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and paleobotonist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) for approval, due to the fact that there are living, breathing dinosaurs on the park, cloned from DNA of the creatures millions of years before.

What ensues is greed, corruption, and the goal of wanting to be remembered as revolutionising how humans and dinosaurs can co-exist.

When a power cut drops all security defences on the enclosures, its a fight for life against beautifully rendered prehistoric creatures.

The build and tension is here, but its when the dinosaurs actually make an appearance that the movie start to become a little bland and it almost seems rushed, even though this is 120min plus film.

Spielberg has created mastery in telling an excellent story, but the chemistry between the characters feels to forced and unnecessary, and it seemed premature to put Jeff Goldblum's eccentric character out of use so early with a bad leg.

Saying that, the performances of Neill and Dern are strong, but the device of using shock and awe/wait for amazement does tend to overpower these performances.

Its excellent for its generation, certainly better than the second instalment, but could have reached heights had it not been for a more concerning promotion of the technology at work here, a milestone of its own behalf, but could easily have been better.