Roller Coaster With Teeth

Rating: 8/10 (21 June 2005)

You expect certain things from Steven Spielberg when he sets out to make a popcorn thriller: Convincing action, scary moments, welcome dollops of humor, and a fluid logic stream that gives reason for all the cinematic craziness on offer. "Jurassic Park" not only lives up to those expectations but exceeds them. The result: Pure entertainment.
The premise of "Jurassic Park" is one thing Spielberg can't take credit for, as it is based on a best-selling novel by today's answer to Jules Verne, Michael Crichton. The idea, in some ways better executed in the novel than the movie, is that a genetics entrepreneur harvests dinosaur blood inside prehistoric mosquitoes preserved in amber so he can clone and grow the beasts on his island hideaway and make a theme park out of it. Problems ensue during a visit by scientists, as supposedly foolproof systems fail and some of the more ferocious dinosaurs escape.
When the entrepreneur, played in the film by Sir Richard Attenborough, insists there's nothing unusual about problems of this kind, that it happened when they opened Disneyland, one of the scientists, a chaos theorist played by Jeff Goldblum, deadpans: "Yeah, but if 'The Pirates of the Caribbean' breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists." Goldblum is a real joy in this movie, kind of the color guy like Richard Shaw was in "Jaws," albeit in a completely different way. I love reading the quotes on this page. So many are from Goldblum's character, Ian Malcolm, and happily preserve the "ums" and "ahs" of Goldblum's trademark delivery. Elsewhere it can be annoying, but this is a perfect film for his snarky, knowing, ingratiating manner.
He also presents the central argument of the film, the notion of genetics run amok, which not only is pertinent to us today but also feeds the sense of dread that powers the thrills of this movie. As Malcolm so neatly puts it: "God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs..."
All this talk about technology getting ahead of man's ability to constructively channel the results would have been cruelly ironic in this, a landmark in cinematic technology with its first-time extensive use of computer graphics imagery, or CGI, had the result been less well thought out, or more jarringly intrusive. Yet Spielberg shows terrific control of the new medium, using the dinosaurs sparingly at the outset and only letting them rip for maximum thrills. There's two sequences that deserve special mention, one where the T. Rex first appears and another where two children are cornered in a kitchen by a pair of hungry Velociraptors, which are first-rate from beginning to end. Throughout the film, in fact, Spielberg finds ways of delivering thrills, and having fun with audience expectations, in a way that feels like a ride on a very satisfying, though scary, roller-coaster.
Unlike "Jaws," this isn't much of a film for characters. Goldblum's more of one than any, while nominal stars Sam Neill and Laura Dern are effective as dino-ologists, especially Neill who gives his character a welcome note of sadism. But the kids and Attenborough's John Hammond are annoying, not a fault of the actors so much as a script and director that coddle them. Hammond's theme park springs more than a leak, yet the fellow is treated more as a beautiful dreamer than a negligent businessman with blood on his hands. The film is a bit too long, with some padding at the beginning that should have been trimmed.
Spielberg's political correctness is also annoying: It's a relief to see Samuel L. Jackson in his extended cameo playing a decent guy who is smoking a cigarette. Otherwise, the nods to feminism and gun control are stifling and predictable, though not nearly as much as in the awful sequel, "Jurassic Park: Lost World."
So much is good here, though. "Jurassic Park" is a smart film that delivers thrills is always worth celebrating, and the special effects lift this up to near-classic status. This is not Spielberg's best effort, but it is a worthy, accessible demonstration of his greatness.