Ah, the Good Old Days

Rating: 10/10 (18 August 2008)

There is something about a Hollywood blockbuster entertainment with Spielberg at the helm. The script is never quite as ridiculous, the effects are never quite as deflecting, the acting never quite as phoned in as, say, a Roland Emmerich or Michael Bay picture. This intense sequel, an inimitable essence of the 1990s, is the sort of movie that pure entertainments once were, and that is the sort of escape, release, leisure every so often. The film's star is one of the most lovable actors in the world, the wry and able full-time comic charmer Jeff Goldblum, who is a clear indication of the movie's era, which, believe it or not, has passed us by already.
Perhaps it's more satisfying for me to watch a blockbuster from my childhood rather than those that are being released today. Yet, I don't suspect it's entirely the nostalgia, because the movie seemed no more or less pleasing now than when I saw it at age nine, a larger- than-life gorefest of magnificent, painful suspense in a packed theater with my cringing mother. It could also be that the tiresome blockbusters in more recent years are perhaps recycled goods that, while they grow with the developing technology, refuse to grow with audience's experience with such similar stories and dying ingenuity. Spielberg's stop- motion, ridiculous corny dialogue back when it wasn't yet so corny and wasn't yet quite so riddled with cheap gratuity, and bygone use of a memorable orchestral score are the true welcome escapes.
Moreover, the Jurassic Park films, The Lost World being by far the most fulfilling one, demonstrate a significant implication that may hopefully be heeded by the youngsters who routinely go through phases with the giant Hollywood franchises such as this, one of letting nature run its course gracefully, to leave nature be, to recognize the harm, vanity, infection, and especially the danger in exploiting it and forcing it out of its biological process. This is something Michael Bay has not, will not, and does not want to do. Yet it's something that Steven Spielberg has always done, planting good-natured seeds in the young generations throughout which he's made an impact.