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Steven Spielberg's 1993 mega-hit rivals
Jaws as the most intense and frightening film he'd ever made prior to
Schindler's List, but it was also among his weakest stories. Based on Michael Crichton's novel about an island amusement park populated by cloned dinosaurs, the film works best as a thrill ride with none of the interesting human dynamics of Spielberg's
Jaws. That lapse proves unfortunate, but there's no shortage of raw terror as a rampaging T-rex and nasty raptors try to make fast food out of the cast. The effects are still astonishing (despite the fact that the computer-generated technology has since been improved upon) and at times primeval, such as the sight of a herd of whatever-they-are scampering through a valley.
--Tom Keogh
From The New Yorker
Steven Spielberg's warm-blooded, state-of-the-art dinosaurs are a lot speedier than their nearest movie kin, the galumphing atomic-mutant monsters that crunched Japanese cities under their feet in the fifties and early sixties, and that enables the filmmaker to create dynamic stalk-and-chase sequences. The carnivorous dinos are efficient, resourceful predators: good scream-generators, in movie terms, because they're both intelligent and relentless, like the best serial killers. But neither they nor the placid herbivores inspire anything close to awe, even with the aid of audience stimulants like surging symphonic music (by the shameless John Williams) and repeated closeups of wide-eyed, openmouthed actors. The screenplay, which is credited to Michael Crichton and David Koepp, reduces Crichton's intricately constructed novel to its bare bones: people running away from hungry animals. Spielberg's monsters have a showroom shine, but the novelty wears off fast; for all the ingenuity of the movie's engineering, "Jurassic Park" doesn't have the imagination-or the courage-to take us any place we haven't been a thousand times before. It's just a creature feature on amphetamines. With Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Richard Attenborough. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
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