Steven Spielberg comes forth with yet another classic. Jurassic Park will not be forgotten.

Rating: 10/10 (30 August 2000)

This is the best dinosaur movie that has ever been made. Maybe a better one will be released sometime in the future, but so far, Jurassic Park is unparalleled. The story involves the re-creation of actual living dinosaurs from their own DNA which was recovered from dinosaur blood remaining inside a prehistoric mosquito which, millions of years ago, was unlucky enough to get caught in the soon solidified sap of a tree. Even all of the scientific elements of the story are explained in a way that even the youngest viewers could understand.
Jurassic Park, However, is not just about making dinosaurs and then getting eaten by them, it is about what happens when humans play with life and try to re-make and contain it in ways that were never meant to be. Dinosaurs once "ruled the earth," but the earth is now ruled by humans, and the two species, separated by millions of years of evolution, cannot coexist. Neither can contain the other, one is sure to overcome.

The spectacular visuals and amazingly convincing special effects and make-up provide an absolutely incredible cinematic experience. Never have dinosaurs been so convincingly made on screen. The fact that the dinosaurs were so real allowed for the film to really keep the audience on the edge of their seats. Particularly memorable moments include a velociraptor jumping up and almost out of the screen as it tries to get Alexis (Adriana Murphy) as she climbs up into the ceiling to escape, and also a scene with a Tyranosaurus in the rear-view mirror of the fleeing humans' Jeep(imitated hilariously in the great Toy Story 2).
However, even though the special effects have the rare combination of being both overpowering and amazingly convincing, Jurassic Park had a good number of important messages to deliver. There were a lot of things that could be learned from this film, and many of them were put right into the dialogue, mostly that of Dr. Ian Malcolm, played wonderfully by Jeff Goldblum. Michael Crichton needs to be recognized for his brilliant creation of such a man as Ian Malcolm, talking understandably about chaos theory and scientific responsibility and the extremely important fact that "life finds a way." Sam Neill also delivers one of the highlight performances of his career as the wonderfully convincing Dr. Alan Grant, alongside Laura Dern as Ellie Satler, and both of them, along with the rest of the cast, were perfectly faithful to the original novel. That, in my opinion, is an extremely important element of films that were adapted from books, and Jurassic Park is rivaled in its literary faith only by other great films like The Green Mile.

Jurassic Park is not a film about a dinosaur amusement park. That is the premise, but the message of the film has a lot to say about the vulnerability of the human race, and it is a testament to the skills of Steven Spielberg and the other filmmakers involved that they were able to make a movie with such an important thing like that to say (among others), while at the same time making the whole experience so much fun.