Jurassic Park (1993)

Written by Peter McGinn on July 23, 2022

This is one of relatively few movies that I have watched more than twice, so obviously I like it. My most recent viewing came because I ran across the remastered version and decided to watch it again after many years.

I was never one of those kids who was into dinosaurs growing up. I was more into DC comic book heroes and their TV counterparts. But I like how realistic monsters and dinosaurs are looking since I started watching these films as an adult. It was awesome the first time I watched it, and Jurassic Park still seems like the finest example of special effects up until that point.

As far as the plot and the story details are concerned, however, it is quite ordinary. A man who doesn’t like children becomes their caretaker when danger threatens them; an embittered consultant dabbles in corporate theft; a wisecracking chaos theorist who proves to be correct in a few predictions, though it is never explained why he was chosen to evaluate the theme park in the first place. And like the security personnel in the old Star Trek episodes, several characters are earmarked for destruction so the the core of characters we are supposed to care about can all survive.

But I am not dissing all of this, just saying that the story is a rather ordinary framework to display the awesome graphics of dinosaurs in motion. But the humor is good, Jeff Goldblum is great (but then I even like him in Apartment.com commercials) and it is all well done. It is just that the film will never make one of my top 10 lists and, finally at this late date, I may have watched it for the last time.