"He's gonna eat the Goat?" Top notch Dinosaur entertainment for all the family.

Rating: 8/10 (22 July 2006)

Jurassic Park is set on an island just off the coast of Costa Rica which rich billionaire businessman John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) rents from the Government, within it's lush green jungles Hammond has created a new type of tourist attraction. The whole island has been converted into a giant theme park called Jurassic Park, a theme park where the paying public can take a tour & see real life Dinosaurs including Triceraptops, herds of Galamides, a Brontosaurs, Velociraptors & even a T-Rex that have been brought back from extinction by means of using Dinosaur DNA from blood found in fossilised Mosquitos. However, in an accident a worker has been killed & Hammond's investors get nervous about the safety issues that surround Jurassic Park so in an attempt to reassure them Hammond invites esteemed palaeontologist's Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) & Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) along with scientist Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) & lawyer Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) to tour the park & hopefully endorse it. Unfortunately things don't go the way Hammond was expecting as a ferocious thunder storm hits the island at the same time treacherous employee Dennis Nerdy (Wayne Knight) shuts down the security fences so he can make his escape after stealing Dinosaur embryos that he plans to sell to a rival company. With the security fences off line the Dinosaurs are free to go wherever they please & the human inhabitants on the island find themselves hunted by the Dinosaurs...
Directed by Steven Spielberg Jurassic Park was a monster-sized (sorry) smash hit at the box-office when it came out & held the record until Titanic (1997) came along, it still makes for great viewing even after all these years. The script by Michael Crichton & David Keopp was based on the novel by Crichton of the same name, in fact Jurassic Park the film went into production before the novel even came out. The film is great basically, there are lots of spectacular big budget set pieces that look good even now, there's some stunning special effects that still hold up really well & the Dinosaur human interaction is as good as anything else put on film with the likes of a huge T-Rex chasing a jeep through the jungle looking impressive. The story is reasonably plausible & it doesn't get too bogged down in scientific jargon, the various story threads all come together pretty well although I'd liked to have seen a few more people get eaten. Alive if possible. Most of the character's are likable & even the teenage kids weren't that annoying apart from a scene when Lex (Ariana Richards) can't seem to do something as simple as turn a flashlight off yet later on in the film she manages to operate one of the most sophisticated computers on the planet & use it to reboot the entire theme park electrical system! There is one exception though, I have to say that Laura Dern's scientist irritated me beyond belief, I don't know if it was Dern or the character but I really wish she'd got eaten. Slowly. My only real complaint with Jurassic Park is the pace, once it gets going around the 50 minute mark it's top entertainment all the way to the finish line but until that point I found it rather slow going with lots of very deliberate 'explanations' & exposition scenes that feel forced, it's the sort of dialogue that you know the filmmakers stick in there on purpose to get the audience up to speed like all the talk about how deadly the Velociraptors are & how they hunt. I'm all for build up & character development but I personally don't like long films, I just don't as I begin to loose interest & become bored so I'd have preferred Jurassic Park to have been at least 15 or 20 minutes shorter. This is a small complaint & Jurassic Park is still a thrilling action packed family horror film & I don't care what anyone says it's definitely a horror film & if it had been made by anyone other than family friendly Spielberg that's how everyone would describe it.
Director Spielberg films the special effect & action scenes with panache & there are some cool sequences like the T-Rex eating a Goat whole (excellent!, as Tim (Joseph Mazzello) exclaims), attacking the jeeps & the Velocirators at the climax hunting the kids in the kitchen. Everything looks, sounds & feels great with brilliant special effects & CGI. The film has some nice scary moments & a few instances of mild gore & violence so it may not be suitable for very young children.
With a supposed budget of about $63,000,000 Jurassic Park is technically excellent & set the standard for just about every special effects film thereafter. Some of the Costa Rican locations look gorgeous although I believe most of it was shot in California. The acting was alright but the real stars here are the Dinosaurs so it doesn't matter that much. This was Richard Attenboroughs first film in 15 years, Samuel L. Jackson has a small role & he would obviously go on to mega stardom, Sam Neill is OK, as already mentioned I thought Dern was awful while Goldblum is as likable as ever & steals every scene he's in.
Jurassic Park is a great film, it's as simple & straight forward as that. It has brilliant special effects, cool set pieces, great Dinosaur action & makes for terrific Saturday afternoon type entertainment. What more do you want? I would imagine there aren't to many people on planet Earth who hasn't seen it yet but if your one of the few then what are you waiting for? Two great sequels followed, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) & Jurassic Park III (2001) while Jurassic Park IV (2008) is currently in pre-production according to the IMDb.