Fun-O-Raptor!
Jurassic Park
Cast: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough
Director: Steven Spielberg
Movie Help Web Popcorn Kernels:
Vaulting to wondrous heights, this adaptation of Michael Crichton's best-seller is pretty darn good. It certainly has a sense of wonder and excitement, not to mention the best dinosaurs I've seen on the screen thus far.
The plot: A millionaire named Hammond (Attenborough) has built a very unique park, but needs a number of scientists to sign off on it to prove to the lawyer and backers that it is safe. He brings aboard three experts: a "chaostician" named Malcolm (Goldblum), and two dinosaur experts named Grant (Neill) and Sadler (Dern). Having no idea what to expect, they are stunned to find out that actual dinosaurs are now walking the Earth again.
The island and characters are introduced, along with two grand-kids of the millionaire (perhaps to add the required "people to be saved" later), something goes wrong (you didn't expect the humans and dinos to be kept apart by fences, did you?), and the rest of the movie is a "chase scene" with a number of pretty exciting sequences.
However, one sequence early in the movie does grate on the nerves. Malcolm, during dinner, rails against the park. At first he does fine, saying that bringing dinosaurs back without even knowing a thing about them is dangerous and unstable. All true. Then he goes on about how "dinosaurs had their shot" and "nature selected them for extinction". Poppycock and balderdash. This is the same tired "Man was not meant to play God" nonsense that occurs in any number of other movies and is sadly misplaced here. If that argument were true, all doctors and health care professionals should simply down tools, toss away all medicine, and let people live or die.
Toss away the misguided plot and simply enjoy the movie as a rip-roaring good action chase. I did, and I can definitely recommend this one as a classic keeper.
