Some mean mothers --

Rating: 7/10 (16 October 2006)

As a critic, Edgar Allan Poe had a simple theory of literary aesthetics. Throw logic out the window and go for the effect. Does it really MATTER why the guy is in a pitch-black room with a pit in the middle and a scythe swinging overhead? As a novelist Michael Crighton is too much the techie to ignore logic. He gives us a step-by-step recreation of the process by which dinosaurs can be resurrected. Then he throws in some kinds of his own. He has a juvenile T. rex finding a helpless human being that is about to become a meal. And the dinosaur plays with his victim, the way a cat plays with an injured mouse. A bit of a stretch because, unlike mammals, reptiles aren't known for their playfulness.
Steven Spielberg's movie version of the novel is epic, heroic, monumental -- and big. Everything about it is big. The novel, grand enough in itself, seems to have exploded gloriously on the screen. And, the introductory explanation of dinosaur resurrection aside, it follows Poe's theory closely. One glitch in the system and the id is loosed on a dozen or so people in Jurassic Park, a kind of living Disneyland. (Attenborough: "Nothing works perfectly the first time. When Disneyland was first opened nothing worked." Goldblum: "When The Pirates of the Caribbean stopped working, the pirates didn't eat the tourists.") After the glitch, similar to the one in Crighton's "Westworld", the administrators and experts running the park have to do a lot of running themselves to escape the various man eaters. It was sharks in Spielberg's "Jaws." And, man, that must be one primeval fear. Everybody faces eventual dissolution, running out of telomeres, but being EATEN ALIVE is another matter. A common dream involves being chased by some unknown monstrous anthropophage while we seem to slog in slow motion through a pond of molasses.
And people do get eaten in this movie. The first two of them are bad guys anyway, one an overweight, giggling industrial spy who is so stupid he tries to play "fetch" with his pursuer. The other is "a blood-sucking lawyer" who is snapped up while sitting on the john.
The movie is one big set piece after another. It isn't possible to describe them all, and not necessary really, because if you can think of a suspenseful scene that might take place in this kind of narrative context, you'll find it here. There are innumerably cross-cuts between a catastrophe about to happen and someone elsewhere feverishly trying to prevent the catastrophe from happening. Chase scenes abound -- on open plains, among museum displays, in computer rooms, in cars, in large kitchens. Someone hollers to someone else who is threatened: "Don't move! He can only see you if you MOVE!" The potential victim moves.
A lot depends on special effects and CGI and they are splendid. The dinosaurs seem real enough, attended by appropriate sounds. (The sound man should get a medal.) Not just roars but chirps, whistles, the patter of heavy rain drops on Plexiglas, the thud of gigantic reptilian feet on earth. "Impact tremors", observes Goldblum. The musical score never leaves us in doubt about what we are supposed to feel. The first sight of a couple of those towering beasts is accompanied by a heavenly choir. (A neon sign should be blinking, "Awe".) Spielberg lets his story and his imagination run wild and it carries you along. The whole family will be glued to the set. If the theme had been cheerier it could easily have been made by the old Walt Disney studio.
A slight problem is that when you go for big effects you sometimes lose a little in the way of continuity. I mean, the fat guy playing "fetch" with his killer, for instance. And then there are Sam O'Neill and the two kids, traipsing through the bush. They've just been attacked and almost killed by T. rex and they've seen a man eaten alive. So what do they do? They settle down and sleep for the night in the crook of a huge tree, smiling. When they see a couple of herbivorous animals with necks the size and shape of the Washington monument, O'Neill cheerfully begins to hoot at them to see if they will answer or -- better yet -- come to him and let the kids pet them. Right. The dinosaurs leave mists when they breathe on glass. Are they warm blooded? As I recall, their hearts have three and a half chambers or something. We see one of the little buggers hatch from her egg, and the egg tooth she should probably have is absent. There is some business about frog DNA having gotten mixed up with the dino DNA, so the dinos have become a greater threat because they are now able to reproduce. But they may not have needed the frogs because in modern reptiles parthenogenesis isn't uncommon. Where I live, we're surrounded by New Mexico whiptail lizards and every one of them is a female, just as in the movie. I don't know if they LIKE it, but that's the way it is. That's just carping though.
There's a bit of philosophizing near the beginning. Is it right or wrong to resurrect dinosaurs. But the conversation doesn't lead anywhere, and I suppose it's just there to remind us not to fool Mother Nature -- as if we cared. The question is a real one. Is nature there only to be shaped to our utilitarian ends? Or is it better to live in harmony with our own ecosystem. That's a lot different from asking if it's right for elephants to have tusks, but the movie isn't interested in the issue because it might irritate our nervous systems. Better to stick with Poe.
Fascinating movie. Spielberg has his fingers on the public pulse. Or his probes into our reptilian brains.