Jurassic Park

Yeah,I know you've seen it, but this time you'll know not to expect monsters and characters (as seen in, say, Jaws) and so can concentrate on being scared silly. Hook wasn't worth the stock it was shot on, frankly, but that Tyrannosaurus Rex makes up for everything. Nearly.

The problem is that none of the good stuff is Steven's: he didn't really do his job at all, just stuck his name at the end. Laura Dem wobbles her mouth and Sam Neil! tries to look grumpy. It's not that they're exactly bad, but just so flimsy, such lazy sketches of human beings. The action sequences had me curled up in a ball, but if it had been a tiger rather than a T-Rex...?

Jurassic Park swings between extremes like few films I can think of. The effects are, for my money, light years beyond T2, which look clunky even a year on. These are not technically impressive animations, these are carnivorous prehistoric creatures come to life. For some reason the friendly dinosaurs are less convincing - it feels like the SFX team spent all their time on the cool ones with big teeth. On the other hand, it is full of the kind of sentimental touches that make the prospect of Spielberg adapting Schindler's Ark a truly terrifying one.

Review by Andrew Abbott
Taken from EUFS Programme 1993-94