Jurassic Park (1993)

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A classic film which feeds everyone who watches it with a love, or at least intrigue, in dinosaurs (despite the severe lack in diverse speciation). For how early this film is the CGI and animatronics are impressive and realistic enough; the dinosaur presences are so impacting that reading there is only 15 minutes of dinosaur footage is shocking.

The cast is a mixture of the unknown and well known. There is quite a lot of over-acting and far too many shots of shocked expressions, not to mention Jeff Goldblum being mercilessly portrayed as a sassy and sexy mathematician and all the shots of him with barley any shirt. Unfortunately many leave the cinema hating ‘the little blonde girl’ (Lex); it is a shame that the elder female character (Ellie) is so strong while her younger counterpart seems to just scream. Richard Attenborough plays a wonderfully conflicted character and gives the best performance, although this could be attributed to the fact he has no dinosaur encounters.

The aesthetics of this film are quite well done, there is a definite downplay of background to emphasise the impressiveness of the dinosaurs. Some of the other visuals do seem to be less thought about and less well designed. The research centres and computer hubs just seem to have what Hollywood believe to be scientific equipment to placate the audience and give then an outline rather than stretch (the massive) budget further to include extraneous details.

The most annoying part of the film are the Hollywood plot-holes. From Velociraptor’s lying in wait until the lights turn on to dinosaurs being able to open doors to perfectly timed rescues; they are numerous and tedious. This is a flaw in every big-budget film, they seem to pay huge amounts for stars and hope the audience will be distracted from the poor story by their faces. Unfortunately this is not the case for anyone with an IQ higher than Forrest Gumps. If these issues were address and amended then this film could elevate itself from another blockbuster to a clever and creative film.