Comprehension

Even if we’re a bit snooty about them, we should go down on our knees and thank heaven for movies like Jurassic Park, and directior like Steven spielberg who make them. They fill the cinemas, if only because the hype is virtually irresistible. And because they do so, hundreds of maniacs all over the world continue to finance film. But is this a good example of a world-wide jackpot movie? Yes and no. Yes, because it delivers dinosaurs by the dozen, in as wizard a fashion as can have been seen on the screen before. And no, because the accompanying story, courtesy of Michael Crichton, has little of the real imagination that made Spielberg’s ET and Close Encounters into the jackpot movies of their day . Technically it works like a dream but, as a cinematic dream, it’s unmemorable. This may be because of its cardboard human characters, dwarfed by the assemblage of their prehistoric ancestors and service by a screenplay that makes the abortive mating calls of this weirdly asexual zoo seem eloquent in comparision. ‘What kind of park is this?’ enquires Sam Neil. ‘Oh, it’s right up your alley’, says Richard Attenborough. More likely, though it has something to do with the development of the story which at no point engages us properly on the human level, except perhaps to hope that the kids and Neil’s grumpy scientist who learns to love them will finally escape from the grasp of the velocirasptors chasing them. We’re looking at nothing but stunts, and they get tiresome laid end to end. Crichton’s book was scarcely much better but at least it had a convincing villain in John Hammond, Jurassic parks’ billionaire developer, whereas Attenborough’s approximation seems merely enthusiastically misguided. And Crichtion’s warning of what might happen if we muck about with nature becomes weaker in the film. What we actually have in Jurassic park is a Non-animated Disney epic with affiliations to Jaws which seems to amuse and frighten but succeeds in doing neither well enough to count. Its real interest lies in how Spielberg’s obsession with childhood now manifests itself in his middle age. It looks; like being on automatic pilot- gestural rather than totally convinced but determined to remain the subject of analytical study. The whole thing, of course, is perfectly adequate fun once the ludicrously simplistic explanation of DNA has been traversed in Hammond’s costly futuristic, computerised den. Even I could understand it. Thereafter, the theme park’s investment will work, leads to predictable disasters, proficiently worked out but never truly frightening . But then this is a film for children of all ages, except perhaps those under 12, and one shouldn’t expect sophistication on other than the technological level. Jurassic Park is more of a roller-coaster ride than a piece of real cinema. It delivers, but only on a certain plane. Even the breaking of the barriers between our civilisation and a monstrous past hasn’t the kick it might have had. Possibly one is asking for a different film which in the end would not have appealed across the box-office spectrum as well as this obviously does. But one still leaves it vaguely disappointed. All that work and just a mouse that roars. it’s wonderful story, but told with more efficiency than inspiration - possibly a sign of the times, along with the merchandising spree which follows it so readily.

CAT/1995

Question . 287

The book Jurassic Park is written by ....