Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck, Samuel L Jackson PG cert, gen release, 127 min
BY 1993, STEVEN Spielberg had become an institution within the movie industry. No longer just a director, he was a movement, an attitude, a surge in history. More than a few observers argued that, without his populist contributions, cinema might have died out altogether. (Hardly likely, but it makes a good subheading.)
In that year, Spielberg confirmed his grasp on the business by attacking it from two flanks. Schindler's List,a high-end tearjerker, finally won him an Oscar. Jurassic Park, a clockwork epic, briefly became the most successful film ever made. Even recovering coma patients will know the plot: misguided scientist clones dinosaurs for theme park, with disastrous consequences.
Looking back at Jurassic Parkon this re-release, one can't help but conclude that it looks too much like the work of, yes, an institution. Having invented a loosely defined genre in the 1970s – horror and suspense blended with outbreaks of child-like wonder – Spielberg now appears to be confined and stifled by that form.
When the child, hiding in a tree, stares wide-eyed at the ruminating dinosaur, thoughts of Elliot's wonder in ETtumble into the brain. John Williams's surging chords already sound like exercises in self-parody. The pressure of being Steven Spielberg looks to have battered all the freshness from his work.
And yet. There's no denying that
Jurassic Parkworks well enough as a bank-holiday time filler. No contemporary child is going to find the special effects very, well, special. But Spielberg knows how to power a story along through narrative twists towards a satisfactory pay-off. If for nothing else, it's worth seeing in the big screen for nostalgic value. Particularly if you were alive 200 million years ago.
