Starring: Sam Neill, Laura Dern.
Rating/Volume: 8.0 (320,000)
My Rating: WATCH
Source: DVD
I'm back on track this week as The World's End has been released in the UK and the four day special event is over. Thank you so much for your feedback and questions so far, I really appreciate it. I would still like some more feedback on what you thought of the special event format and whether you think I should do more events like that with the more notable and significant cinematic releases. My aim is to please, so please help me to help you! Anyway, my next 250 Review is here; Jurassic Park (#227).
For those of you who are not familiar, Jurassic Park (#227) is a 1993 science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a 1990 novel by Michael Crichton. Winning 3 academy awards this film astonished audiences everywhere with its epic animatronics and special effects that, quite literally, bought dinosaurs to life! The story follows two archaeologists (Neill and Dern) who are confronted by a man called John Hammond (Richard Attenborough, after a 14 year screen absence) with a very unusual invitation. He invites them to an island to preview his new theme park that has been especially built there. It is soon evident that Hammond and his team have been able to clone and breed several species of dinosaurs and that they are the main attraction! However, after there is a bad storm a t-rex escapes, Jurassic Park becomes a very dangerous island that the remaining characters must escape to survive.
This film was a landmark. I recall my Dad telling me just how amazing it was to be sitting in that cinema watching it for the first time when he had never seen anything like that before. And I can believe it. Nowadays, we've caught up. Pacific Rim has just been released and its apparent they can now make massive monsters come to life in their sleeps. But this was a simpler time. Special effects were more than possible in the early nineties; just look at what Star Wars accomplished almost 15 years earlier. But Steven Spielberg himself wanted all close proximity shots to be animatronic. I always find this admirable in film makers. It's too easy to say "right, we're going to put a green screen in and then let somebody else handle it". I think it makes for great special effects, awesome moments for the audience and, in terms of longevity, I think they hold up better in this era when CGI is exponentially improving. If you make a real dinosaur it will continue to look like a real dinosaur forever, however with CGI effects, you look back 20 years and can suddenly see enough holes to be able to strain tea with it. That why even elements of the original Evil Dead (my favourite horror film of all time) still look awesome. Granted, the scene with a herd of Gallimimus being chased by a Tyrannosaurus Rex would have been impractical and challenging to make with animatronics and the huge reveal of the herd of the Brontosaurus would have probably broken the budget, but the scene with the injured Stegosaurus and the close shots of the real T-Rex were made very well and will always remain fondly in my memory.
This film is one of my earliest memories. When I was born this film was only two years past its cinematic release date. To put it modern terms, it wouldn't have have quite arrived on Netflix yet. In fact, it's one of my earliest memories the cast of this film are some of the first memorable actors that I was ever exposed to. Even now whenever I see Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill and Richard Attenborough I always hold them in high regard and I always think of Jurassic Park (#227). Back when I was just 3 or 4 years old I didn't really appreciate them the way I do now, I was too busy having my mind blown my watching a real life dinosaur eat some poor bloke right off a toilet. But now I appreciate the great cast more so. I love Richard Attenborough. To this day he is my favourite grandfather figure actor in Hollywood and even though I'm not too familiar with his earlier work I caught the back end of The Great Escape (#111) recently and I thought he was great. Who I hated (even at the tender age of 4) were those annoying children. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the actors performances; they played the role of annoying bratty school children to a T. But the girl screaming every two seconds, eurgh. If I was Sam Neill trying to survive an island of meat eating dinosaurs she'd be the bait, just saying!
Overall, this film is no doubt a landmark in cinema. It is an enjoyable family favourite that sprouted two sequels; The Lost World in 1997 and Jurassic Park III in 2001 (both of limited success). It is a film that I can wholeheartedly recommend as a childhood favourite as well as a top class film!
Now, I'm going to ask you to go and watch it yourself.
You can buy it anywhere on DVD and Blu Ray from £5 or so. Also it is being re-released worldwide in UK cinemas on 23rd August 2013 in Real D 3D. So if you feel you were cheated by the fact you didn't get to go and see this back when it was in cinemas you can go and experience it this August! There is also news that a script for a Jurassic Park 4 is in development and the film will be released in 2015. It is not know yet whether it will be a sequel or a reboot yet and there is no news on casting, but more should be known in the next 2 years!
Feel free to send me a message at reviewthe250@gmail.com with any comments or your own views and opinions; you can also leave a comment below!
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Thanks for reading!
William
Next: Star Trek (#225)
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