Jurassic Park

Oh Jurassic Park…

When you think of the 90’s, and specifically when you think of 90’s cinema, there are a few films that pop into your head. The Lion King, The Shawshank Redemption, Saving Private Ryan, Independence Day, The Green Mile, The Matrix…. And Jurassic motherfucking Park!

This is the ultimate 90’s nostalgia flick for a lot of people, myself included, but I asked myself does it actually hold up to all of my fond memories of it… And for the most part, yes it does.

It’s been 23 years and the visual effects in this film are still breathtaking. The sense of awe and wonder when you first see the dinosaurs in all their glory is still one of the greatest cinematic scenes in history for me. But aside from how well it stands up I have noticed some dinosaur sized issues with the film.

There are some painfully underused actors. Samuel L. Jackson is in this movie, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that most people have forgotten that, but he is. And he plays the chain smoking tech guy that isn’t white and obese. And he is woefully under used. He could’ve made the character great, all the scenes with him in could have shone but they don’t. He is a forgettable character. And the film is riddled with forgettable characters and thrown away story arcs.

“I’m a Hacker” Really? because you know what a cd-rom is? Where is the evidence of this? why should we believe you?

Where does the story of the poisoned triceratops go? they introduce it, they stop and make dino poop jokes. but then they just abandon it… All that scene served to do was make sure that Doctor Satler wasn’t with the group when shit hit the fan.

And boy, does shit hit the fan. The T-Rex, when she appears, is everything you want a menacing hulking movie monster to be. She is awesome and she fucking knows it. She is sinister, she is menacing, she is downright fucking scary… AND SHE’S GONNA EAT YOUR MOTHERFUCKING LAWYER!

That’s actually the best thing I have seen any monster do in any movie ever. And it basically sums up my feelings about the American culture of filing law suits against anyone over anything that doesn’t fit their world view. The only way that it could be better is if she’d ate Jeff Goldblum and then we wouldn’t be subjected to his same performance over… and over… and over… He’s like the living embodiment of Dante’s seventh circle of hell….

But despite all of the small flaws, like the teams of highly paid genius biologists who made the dinos not realising that some frogs can spontaneously change sex so they might end up with dino boys too, this is still a brilliant film to watch. It has everything you want from a film.

It has the humour, the tension, it has some scares to it and it has a motherfucking t-rex. What more could you ask from a film?