I LOVE this movie!

Rating: 10/10 (2 May 2008)

This film is easily one of my favorite movies. I saw this movie when it came out in theaters back in 1993; I was only 9-years-old and, though some scenes scared the crap out of me, it blew me away. I was amazed at how, for the first time in a movie, I felt like I was watching REAL dinosaurs. For those who haven't seen this movie (there are people like that?), it centers on a billionaire's attempt to create a new amusement park on an isolated island creating bio-engineered dinosaurs; when a group of specialists are brought in to examine the park, things go terribly wrong.
I absolutely loved the story of this film; I loved it so much I had my parents buy me Michael Crichton's novel and I read it 3 times through the course of my fifth grade year. It was then that I fell in love with the work of Crichton and found myself reading the rest of his work. While, yes, the movie did divert pretty heavily from the book, I still felt it was a great adaptation. It's Spielberg's version of Crichton's story, so I don't mind the mass differences. The movie is much more family-friendly than Crichton's novel and I would love to see a another version eventually, a darker version that sticks closer to Crichton's novel. Unlike most instances when I can say "The book was better" or "The movie was better", I don't feel the need in this case because they were both fantastic.
The cast did a terrific job. Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Richard Attenborough...all were great in their roles. Though my favorite performance came from Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm, the arrogant chaos theoretician. I've been a fan of Goldblum for a while and I thought he was the perfect choice for the role in this movie. Of course, I have to rave a bit about the film's special effects. As I mentioned before, this film contains probably the most realistic dinosaurs seen in cinema. A seamless combination of practical animatronics and CGI were used to bring the dinosaurs to life. By now, the effects seem a little dated but they continue to stand strong even now, 15 years later.
This movie is one of those films that every must see. It grossed $350 million in the US alone. The film marked yet another milestone in special effects in cinema. And most importantly, it's just entertaining.