One of the all time great blockbusters

Rating: 9/10 (16 March 2020)

I have a long and detailed history with Jurassic Park. It may or may not be particularly interesting, but discussing that kind of thing can be potentially helpful when it comes to movies that have already been discussed to near death.
I was a 5-year-old kid once, and so I loved dinosaurs. Part of me still things they're really cool, to be honest. And so I can remember watching Jurassic Park quite a lot as a kid. I don't know if it was ever one of my absolute favourite movies, but it was always very cool, very exciting, and sometimes very scary. Then in 2013, it got a re-release in cinemas, in 3D (remember 3D? Remember when so many movies were released in 3D? It only lasted a few years but it was crazy, and sometimes really annoying. Anyway...) I was 18, hadn't seen Jurassic Park since I was in the single digits, and went to watch it. I really liked it again. It was still fun, still exciting, and I could now respect the craft behind it a whole lot more. As an added bonus, it looked and sounded so great on the big screen that the shoehorned in 3D effects were even tolerable.
Another rewatch five years after that gave me a similar feeling, but it was my most recent viewing a few nights ago where I realised Jurassic Park wasn't just a very good movie: it was a great one. A near perfect one, to be perfectly frank. A film with fantastic pacing, characters who are simple yet instantly understandable and also sympathetic enough so that you don't just want to see them all get eaten, a great balance of genuinely funny humour and incredible tension, an engaging story that's still involving despite being refreshingly small-scaled compared to many other blockbusters (the stakes involve the survival of a few key characters, not the entire world), and maybe most surprisingly: special effects that have hardly aged a day.
Okay, without sounding too hyperbolic: technically the effects aren't perfect. If I want to nitpick, there are some CGI shots of dinosaurs here and there (particularly when they're very well lit) where nowadays the detail would be greater. But if you take the first big T-Rex scene, or the velociraptor sequences towards the film's end, I don't honestly think you could make them look much better nowadays than they made them look back in 1993. Spielberg and his effects team nailed most of the sequences here perfectly, and it's incredible to consider the film is now 27 years old. I love Terminator 2, and the effects in there look very good still, even the CGI ones. But they're not as good as this. Even if dinosaurs didn't really look like how they're depicted here (apparently velociraptors might have been much smaller than they are in this film and FEATHERED), you still buy these creatures as existing on this island, with these characters.
As a kid, I felt like the pre-island scenes took up a good deal of time, but as a (slightly) more patient adult, they honestly feel perfectly paced. There's just enough overall set-up for both the characters and the basic plot without making the audience feel bored. I also love how it wraps up nice and quickly in the conclusion, without feeling abrupt. Spielberg back in his hey-day often had such a good grasp on what to stretch out for the purposes of suspense and what would work better if it was accelerated. He was a master of pacing as much as he was an absolute master of knowing where to point the camera and how to direct his actors in a way where no one felt out of place, and everyone knew what kind of tone the movie was going for.
I feel like I'm rambling, and I could go on, because it's hard to run out of good things to say when it comes to a movie as great as Jurassic Park. If there are flaws, they're minor. Some may find the child characters annoying (I didn't think they were too bad though, and while this isn't strictly a kid's movie, I think it makes sense to have them there to make it a widely appealing movie). A couple of Laura Dern's character's feminist remarks sound a little clunky- female characters in films like this have come a fair way, and so nowadays those sorts of lines would probably be worked in a little more naturally and in a less cheesy manner. Maybe Samuel L. Jackson is under-utilised? He's good here for what he has to do, but maybe because this was a pre-Pulp Fiction era, most people hadn't realised just how to utilise his immense talent and screen presence correctly.
I could go on, but these are honestly fairly insignificant problems. And sure, it's not a particularly deep or complex movie, but neither does it feel like it's stupid or pandering, and so if it wants to focus on being entertainment first and foremost, given that it succeeds in that regard, I think that's more than acceptable. And there is some interesting (though admittedly simple) stuff in there about man vs. nature and making a profit out of natural resources, if you really do need something to analyse.
If you somehow haven't watched Jurassic Park yet, I'd highly recommend changing that as soon as possible. This is a gripping, fun, intense, exciting, and surprisingly funny movie that hasn't lost any of its power and likability since its release close to three decades ago now. It's so good I've spent 900 words praising it so far without even touching once on how Jeff Goldblum is so great and so hilarious he comes close to stealing the entire show from the amazingly well realised GIANT DINOSAURS.
Watch it now. And if you have seen it, but it was a while ago, watch it again, and prepare to be amazed by how well it's aged. Spielberg, the cast, John Williams, Michael Crichton, and everyone else involved deserve so much praise for the two hours of fantastic entertainment they worked together to put out. It's an absolute (and essentially timeless) classic in every sense of the word.