Nothing HAPPENS in this movie!

Rating: 3/10 (10 November 1998)

Two hours worth of vintage special effects, the likes have which have never been placed on screen, are corrupted by screenwriters Michael Crichton (who authored the book) and David Koepp's refusal to incorporate anything remotely resembling a plot or characters. Crichton's book, which was tedious but rich with characterizations and scientific plausibility (without being overly technical) gives way to a script in which the characters have no personalities, the scientists have no backgrounds to bring them or their ideas to this point, and the dinosaurs are, for all intents and purposes, just THERE. You can say all you want about how wonderful it was be frightened to death by real-looking dinosaurs (would you really know one if you saw it?), but even "Land of the Lost," a 1970's Sat. morning live-actioner about a man and two children (his own) transported back in time and trying to survive amid free-roaming dinosaurs, had more of a plot than this garbage. And for all the hype about visuals, I, for one, would like to think we still go to the movies to be drawn into another world and other lives, not just an amusement park. Look for a few good one-liners out of Jeff Goldblum as chaos-theorist Ian Malcolm (allegedly based on at least one real-world ecologist), and completely lifeless performances from the otherwise reliable Sam Neill, Samuel L. Jackson and actor-turned-Gandhi-director Richard Attenborough, as well as non-actress Laura Dern. Just as a footnote: The "Jurassic Park" thrill-ride attraction opened at the Universal Studios theme park in Southern California in June 1996. A theme park is exactly where this whole "movie" really belongs.