All these stars, it should be pointed out, are female. (Who said there were no great roles for gals this summer?) You see, to prohibit his dinosaur population from reproducing outside the lab, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), the billionaire impresario of the tropical-island theme park, has cloned only female creatures. Naturally, since he is afflicted with incurable hubris, his best-laid plans go awry: as every cautionary scientific fable since “Frankenstein” has warned, don’t mess with Ms. Nature.
When the dinosaurs go on their rampage midway through “Jurassic Park,” Spielberg and his special-effects aces rev up the terror with a cutthroat efficiency that will be too intense for most kids under 9. Good as the bone-crunching mayhem is-an enraged Tyrannosaurus overturning a car, a spectacular shot of a velociraptor leaping off a kitchen floor toward the camera-Spielberg is especially canny in his buildup to horror. The thumping tread of an unseen beast, its massive weight eerily conveyed by the turbulence in a water glass . . . the thrashing of trees and the cries of predator and prey when an ox is dropped into a raptor’s pen for lunch-at such moments “Jurassic Park” has the spine-tingly magic of Spielberg’s best work.
The parts, however, are better than the whole. When Spielberg is cooking on all burners-in “Jaws,” in “Close Encounters” or “E.T."-he can transform genre conventions into a seamless, visionary whole. “Jurassic Park” doesn’t have that organic flow; it can’t disguise its clunky, B-movie soul. Following Michael Crichton’s novel, screenwriters Crichton and David Koepp round up their unlikely gaggle of characters, each of whom has to carry a heavy load of scientific exposition, and none of whom makes any deep claims on our affections.
Hammond assembles a trio of experts to give his park their seal of approval: we meet paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill), whose aversion to children will be predictably reversed when he must save Hammond’s two movie-brattish grandchildren from becoming the dinosaurs’ hors d’oeuvre. As his paleobotanist girlfriend, Laura Dern radiates strenuous enthusiasm. It’s never clear why Hammond wants the opinion of the moralizing mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), but Goldblum’s manic line readings add a quirky pleasure to the setup. Hammond himself, played by Attenborough with plummy theatricality is transformed from Crichton’s evil fanatic into a more avuncular presence: the true bad guy is the obese, mercenary Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight), who’s selling pirated dinosaur embryos to an outside concern. Spielberg tweaks profiteers again (or is he tweaking himself?) when he shows us rows and rows of Jurassic Park souvenirs at the park’s gift shop: merchandise just like the products that will be spun off this movie.
“Jurassic Park” hits all the patented Spielberg marks-humor, thrills, heart-but not without strain. There’s a gooey, lyrical interlude when Neill and the kids bond with a grazing Brachiosaurus (in the movie’s New Age scheme of things, the good dinosaurs are vegetarians), but it feels like a pumped-up Kodak moment. These battle-scarred kids should be terrified. Oh, well. Is there any point in complaining that this $60 million fun-house ride is less than a classic? All we really ask is that it be scary (it is) and that the dinosaurs set a new standard in suspension of disbelief (they do). Go, tremble and enjoy.
