Jurassic Park (1993) Review
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A wealthy businessman, John Hammond (Attenborough) has spent the last five years developing an island where his scientific team have brought Dinosaurs back to life. When his investors want safety endorsement from lead experts, he asks Palaeontologists Dr Alan Grant (Neil) and Dr Ellie Sattler (Dern) for theirs.
Bringing them to the island, they are joined by Dr Ian Malcolm (Goldblum) who is an expert on chaos theory, sent by his investors along with their lawyer Gennaro (Ferrero). While their arrival is met with great awe in the spectacle of the real life dinosaurs, the argument arises if was ethical or wise to create the park.
When park employee Dennis Nedry (Knight), who is being paid by an opponent of Hammond, tries to steal the embryos of all the dinosaurs, he sets in motion a chain of events that will leave the entire island without power — and all the dinosaurs to roam free to cause chaos.
What set this apart from the other five films in the franchise, and some other similar action movies of the time is the characters. The film is balanced well with the action and the dialogue scenes. With only a small handful of speaking parts, there is more room for character development. Grant as the primary character, goes from being very anti children at the start of the film and his arc with Hammond’s grandkids helps him grow.
The pacing is very well done, with the acts broken up nicely. It would have been a slight improvement if the final act was stretched out a little, as the kitchen scene is less than 15 minutes from the closing credits, I would have loved to see more here.
The score from the legendary John Williams is epic and memorable, and one of my favourites of his. While he wasn’t recognised for it from either the Oscars or the Globes, this was primarily due to his work in Spielberg’s other 1993 film Schindler’s List.
The special effects still hold up very well, and there are a few pivotal scenes, especially with the T-Rex where I honestly couldn’t tell what was animatronics and what was computer effects. Considering this is a 30 year old movie, this is very impressive.
Easily the best film in the franchise, and worthy of its spot in IMDB’S top 150.
5/5
