Thursday 25 October 2012

Jurassic Park (1993) - ★★★★

Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Michael Crichton
Stars: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck, Samuel L. Jackson, Wayne Knight

This movie is so bad in many aspects, but it's just incredible in many others. Part of me wants to rate it lowly for its shortcomings, but I just can't do it. Jurassic Park is one of those films that I will always love.

Multi-millionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) created a theme park filled with dinosaurs by cloning them from the dna found in mosquitos. He enlists three scientists, Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), to see the park and give their scientific opinion in favor of the park. However, things go horribly wrong when the man in charge of running the the parks computer systems, (Wayne Knight), shuts down the power that is keeping the dinosaurs away from the humans. The scientists and Hammond's grandchildren are constantly fighting for survival as they encounter Velociraptors, T-rex's and other deadly dinosaurs thought extinct.

The dialogue throughout the film was pretty laughable. I believe that this film was aimed for children, yet I couldn't imagine many young children enjoying Jurassic Park. Unless they are big fans of dinosaurs, many would be extremely scared. When my 8 year old sister saw this film in cinemas, she couldn't look at the movie. She sat in her seat with her back to the movie until it was over. That's one of the reasons I believe this film didn't work properly, because it was targeted for children, yet doesn't fully satisfy children or adults.

Almost all of the characters were frustratingly annoying. In particular, Hammond's grandchildren. These two were also there so that children can relate to the film a bit more. All they did was take away from the incredible movie. They were always either doing something stupid or saying something stupid. I understand that their fear makes the movie more realistic, but there was too much screaming. I don't know about you, but they were starting to take the joy of the film away for me.

The main problem I have is that the action sequences took away from the awe-inspiring vision of the dinosaurs themselves. I would much rather have seen a film full of dinosaurs re-created the way Spielberg has done so masterfully. I loved the sequence where we first see the dinosaurs, it was beautiful. It meshed so well with one of the greatest movie themes of all time by John Williams. I was just blown away. There were only two of these relaxing and beautiful scenes though, while the rest of the film was action and comedy, which just degrades this masterpiece of cinema.

With all of these negatives, there were just as many positives. The fact that these dinosaurs looks so realistic sucked me right into the atmosphere. This film did something many thought impossible, and that was show us what dinosaurs looked like. I must have said "wow" about 10 times throughout the movie. Richard Attenborough was the star of the film in my opinion. His acting was masterful as always, and I was genuinely sad for him when everything went wrong.

There's so much beauty and wonder in this movie that I ended up clapping when it was finished. I have never seen a film like it, and probably never will again. No matter how bad the dialogue and acting were, Spielberg more than made up for it with the cinematography and realistic recreation of dinosaurs. I love this film, which is why it deserves a high rating.

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