The way all blockbusters should be...

Rating: 10/10 (11 June 2003)

This is a film that has truly stood the test of time and has remained a modern classic of the Hollywood blockbuster system. Deservedly becoming the biggest film of all time in 1993 and launching the most entertaining film series ever made, Spielberg's film contains all the cliches a blockbuster should have and ensures that it remains good fun. We have the courageous scientist in the shape of Sam Niell, his fiesty girlfriend courtesy of Laura Dern, a doom and gloom expert in the causes of the problem at hand thanks to a brilliant performance from Bob Peck and the quirky scientist type who prophesises doom from the get go in the shape of Jeff Goldblum. This is fun and has remained so for the last ten years.
Where the film has remained so good over the past decade is in its use of CGI and at the time state of the art special effects. They still haven't dated and look fluidly real as if the technology had only been made yesterday. Undoubtedly the dinosaurs are the star here (none of the actors have headlined each film with a change of performer for each one, Goldblum in the second installment, Niell returning for number three), but it doesn't matter because the dinosaurs here are truly movie stars in their own right and like characters in an ensemble film they all get their moments. The T-Rex gets to cause spectacular destruction, the Raptors get to be the vicious and conniving villains of the story, the Brachiosaurus ensures it grabs our awe while the Tricerotops gains our sympathy.
However, Spielberg ensures that it isn't just the dinosaurs who are the stars here. He creates tension in the way that only he can with prolonged set pieces such as the T-Rex attack and the moment Alan and Tim have to race down a tree with the threat of a car falling on top of them. Sure it ain't art, it's great entertainment and it is great fun and it here where Spielberg ensures the film classic status. He uses the two hour frame to set up events and the story in the first hour and then let the chaos rip in the second with suspenseful action sequence after suspenseful action sequence and it works. While you may not look to performances in a film like this, it does have some fantastic actors. Niell seems surprisingly well suited to being a Spielbergian hero who starts of disliking children only to have his heart melted at the end. He appears to be having great fun playing the guy who saves the day. Jeff Goldblum almost runs away with the entire film as Malcolm, the quirky off beat nature of the character ensuring many a great one liner while Richard Attenborough is heart breaking as the Walt Disney like John Hammond whose dream becomes a violent nightmare.
The film is great fun from beginning to end and deserves to be up there with Jaws and King Kong as one of the all time great monster movies.