You’re Implying That a Group Composed Entirely of Female Animals … Will Breed? … Sexy!
The decision to watch today’s movie (and the ensuing remainder of the trilogy) happened because of my recent reviews of the Back to the Future trilogy. It wasn’t me thinking about great trilogies that got me interested, but every one of the Back to the Future movies began with a trailer about the recent BluRay releases of this movie’s trilogy. Then I says to myself that it’s been far too long since the last time I watched this, and their time had come. We get started with the original, Jurassic Park, written by Michael Crichton and David Koepp, directed by Steven Spielberg, and starring Sam Neill, Richard Attenborough, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Joseph Mazzello, Ariana Richards, Wayne Knight, Martin Ferrero, Samuel L. Jackson, and Bob Peck.
When a park worker is attacked and injured by something at his new park, lawyer Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) tells eccentric billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) that the investors will pull out unless he gets some experts to sign off on it. Gennaro brings Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and Hammond brings paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern). They take a helicopter to the park and that’s when they find out the magic Hammond has created: he’s reanimated the dinosaurs! I just spoiled the whole movie for you! And for another spoiler, it turns out that dinosaurs don’t get along with humans. That’s why Jesus killed them all 3000 years ago. Sarah Palin told me so. Anyways, Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) makes a move to steal a bunch of dinosaur embryo’s by shutting down the security around the park. Problem is, the above mentioned people are all out on a tour with Hammond’s grandchildren, Tim (Joseph Mazzello) and Lex (Ariana Richards), and the security gates and tour vehicles just simultaneously shut down in front of a Tyrannosaurus cage. I think we may have an idea where this is going. Spoiler alert: Jesus saves them all with his sweet, Jesus-y bisceps.
Have you guys heard of this movie? It’s pretty damned good! The story is fairly simple, but the premise is pretty well thought out and, more importantly, there’s lots of good action. The story of the movie is basically just that people are put into a predicament and need to escape it, but the premise of the movie is much better. Your typical action movie probably wouldn’t put very much thought into how the dinosaurs got there, but this one did. Being cloned from blood stored in the belly (or thorax or whatever they wanna call it) of ancient mosquitoes that are preserved in solidified amber. Then, in order to keep the dinosaurs from breeding and running amok on the island, they are genetically engineered to all be female. Then, to add another wrinkle (that doesn’t actually make any kind of a difference to this movie) they begin to breed because they’ve used some reptile DNA and there are apparently some frogs that can turn tranny when they live in a sausage party. I don’t know if any of these things are true and/or viable, but they worked for me. The action was great. The movie starts off pretty strong when we watch the guy get attacked by the Velociraptor, getting dragged up the side of the cage reminiscent of the girl in Jaws. It slows down for a little while as we meet our characters, but then ramps up the action increasingly once the dinosaurs get involved. The scene when we first meet the T-Rex still holds up as a fantastic scene, and it includes my favorite moment in the movie. It’s when the T-Rex has flipped over the car and is attacking the undercarriage of the car. It bites a tire, which releases air into it’s mouth, making it kind of step back and stare at it like a dog that’s confused when his toy squeaks. And that T-Rex still holds up. Even living in a world of Avatar, that T-Rex still looks great. And when the T-Rex throws down on a couple Velociraptors at the end of the movie, wins, and then roars triumphantly as a banner falls, it’s still pretty awesome. But a couple of things for this movie: why is the entirety of Jurassic Park only able to be accessed through DOS prompts? No one uses that anymore! Also, how are we to get behind Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum as our heroes when it takes them like 10 minutes of a T-Rex attacking the car with two kids in it to decide they should help? I understand that a T-Rex is intimidating and that little boy was pretty damned annoying, but you gotta do something, man! But the men aren’t the only assholes in this movie. Laura Dern was present for Sam Neill’s whole speech at the beginning of the movie about how Velociraptor’s will look you in the eye as two more attack you from the side, but she chose not to warn Bob Peck that he might be in that exact situation in a few moments. His blood is on your hands now, Dern!
The performances were pretty great in this movie. I always like Sam Neill. That guy’s pretty underrated and never really got the bump in his career that you’d expect this movie to give, even though he was great. The best scene of him was from right in the beginning of the movie when some chubby kid that had somehow gotten onto a dig site starts talking shit about Velociraptors and Sam Neill tells him that great story about how they would kill the shit out of his chubby ass. It gives you pretty much everything you need to know about the character right away. Very knowledgeable and passionate about dinosaurs, but could perhaps use a little bit of work on his ability to deal with kids. Laura Dern didn’t do much for me in this movie. She seemed just a hair above damsel in distress the whole time. She did fine, but not much more. Jeff Goldblum was … well, he was Jeff Goldblum. They just kind of let him talk and take what they wanted to use. He could get a little tedious, but was otherwise fine. Richard Attenborough was good in this movie. He was so happy all the time that he made me think he would probably play a great Santa Clause. The kids were alright too. Joseph Mazzello was a little annoying, but that’s what he was going for. Ariana Richards mainly just screamed a lot.
It’s so nice when you can look back on a movie you watched when you were 10 and enjoy it almost as much, and Jurassic Park does that. This movie holds up like a champ. Good story involving a well thought out and explained premise, and mostly great performances. The directing is Spielberg. That’s equivalent to great. It amazed me most of all that this movie’s graphics were still able to hold up so well, but they definitely do. As does the entire movie, for that matter. I only have them on DVD right now, but it’s just a matter of time before I re-purchase them on BluRay. This movie belongs in any collection, regardless of size. We’ll see if that goes for the rest of the series over the next two days. Jurassic Park gets “I spared no expenses” out of “If the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists.”
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