I see dead species

Rating: 4/10 (23 July 2014)

You know what? I recently wondered if I had actually seen Jurassic Park. I vaguely remembered I had done it some years back but couldn't be sure the couple of images in my memory arrived there while watching it or because images of JP have been so ubiquitous since.
I decided to watch it and it really felt like I had never seen it... and I understand why: it is so much of a marketing product and so little of a real movie with interesting characters, elaborate plot and timing. Well I watched it anyway and it turned out that I had already seen it since I previously had given it 4 stars on IMDb.
I admit I have never seen it on the big screen. Not in 1993, neither when it was reissued in 3D (I seen dead species, but not 3D... like 40% of the people). I never bought the hype because I was never interested in dinosaurs, so that makes me a blank viewer who can tell the true quality of the movie. And quite frankly it is the worst Spielberg movie I have watched (I skipped Always, and couldn't sit through Hook). Actually I don't know where it takes a talented director to shoot this. Maybe in pre-production for the artistic and ground-breaking technical choices. But that is mostly a producing job. The story itself is weak (I haven't read the book but feel it's always a bad idea to let the writer chose what to keep or not i the script) and action feels disjointed as we cut to various places that end up feeling more like the shooting sets they are than like parts of the fantastic island we are shown during the outstanding helicopter trip.
Why wasn't I more impressed by the CGI + animatronics? Maybe because I didn't run to watch it back in 1993 and 10 years later this was just commonplace SFX. And again the still pictures from the movie had been so publicised that I knew exactly what to expect.
So I will maintain my 4/10 rating because of the technical work in it, but it really is a poor movie. Spielberg did an excellent job with poor SFX in Jaws, here he does an excellent job at getting the right amount and quality of SFX but forgets the job he dreamt of when he had his first Super-8 camera. He even soften the evil Dr Hammond who is mostly like him: he initially has a passion for what he does and wants to do good but gets overwhelmed by the business stakes and the fact that most people around him are sycophants blurting how good he is.