Jurassic Park

1993 dinosaur movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An old guy uses science to make some real walking and breathing dinosaurs, just like Walt Disney did with Abraham Lincoln and a bunch of other presidents for his Hall of Presidents. And like Disney, the old guy's got plans to make billions of dollars by opening up an amusement park where guests can feed llamas to a T-Rex or ride on a Bronchiosaurus. And no, I'm not even sure if there is such dinosaur as a Bronchiosaurus, but it looks right. Somebody told me that T-Rexes aren't even real dinosaurs anymore, but I think paleontologists are just looking for something to do and rearranging bones.

First, I like that poster. It's simple yet iconic. Second, let me tell you a little story that you won't really care about. It's important though because aside from giving this a bonus point for wacky Jeff Goldblum, I'm giving this a bonus point for what occurred in this story I'm going to tell you. My lovely wife and I saw this in a theater in Knoxville, I think, and we both liked it. When we were back home again in Indiana for a break, it was playing at the lovely, bat-infested theater. Admission was two bucks, the experience was grand on the big screen, and we decided we would go see it again. I asked my brother to tag along, and he refused, presumably because the movie cost too much money to make. We said, "Come on, Mark. It's giant dinosaurs eating lawyers and chasing annoying children!" but he still refused. It was an opportunity to see a flick in the Indiana and maybe have a wild animal bite at you while you get to spend some time with family, but still, he just wasn't interested. I'm not sure if he's seen the movie since then. Big budgets and the needs for blockbusters are difficult things to overcome some times, but this has enough story, some scenes with just exquisite suspense, and a few solid performances to make it a very good movie. And this breaks the world's record for the most Richard Attenboroughs on the screen at the same time which is something. I really like the dinosaurs, the best thing about them being that I can't tell which ones are giant animatronic things ("Are these characters auto-erotica?") and which ones are made with computers. The brachiosaur look a bit rubbery, but all the dinosaurs beat those silly-looking apes in the new Planet of the Apes movie. And that T-Rex looks so good when we finally get to see him, although it is in dark and rainy circumstances. That scene has so much gradually-building dramatic tension that it keeps you on the edge of your seat even after you've already seen this. And then you see the T-Rex in the daylight, and he doesn't look bad at all. Of course, some big bad movie music has to pop up during that T-Rex scene, and that made me roll my eyes. Things were so perfect when it was just dinosaur grumbling and squelchy steps in the mud. I don't need big movie music to feel something. But at least Spielberg does something interesting with all the money he uses to make movies. Speaking of that, I'm pretty sure Jeff Goldblum is animatronic at times here, too. He's got an almost deplorable excess of personality, but as always, he's fun to watch. My favorite moment in the entire movie is when he sees a dinosaur and grabs his own nipple. I wonder if that, and all his stammered uh's, is scripted or if he's just improvising. Wayne Knight (Hello, Newman) is too wacky to be in this movie. His curly hair is too distracting, but his demise is another perfectly suspenseful moment. Neither Sam Neill or Laura Dern get in the way, even they turn into action heroes. A scene where Neill imitates a brachiosaur confused me though. I saw a guy at the zoo doing that with a lion once, but you'd think a scientist would know better. The weakest links are the children. I have a theory that Spielberg has a facility, probably in the basement of his mansion, where he stores the same types of children to use in his movies. I'm sure Drew Barrymore will write about it in a memoir one day. I did like when one said, "That dinosaur doesn't look very scary. He looks like a six-foot turkey," and is handled well by Neill's character who references his intestines being spilled. I wish Spielberg would have had the balls to kill them both. Actually, in my version of this movie, all the human characters would have died, a penultimate scene would have featured two dinosaurs jumping up and giving each other a reptilian high five, and a meteor would have hit the island killing all the creatures. That's a twist that would make M. Night Shamalamadingdong shit his pants.