Editorial Review:

Product Description:
A wealthy man has created an island amusement park filled with dinosaurs cloned from fossilized DNA. When he invites experts to endorse it, nature takes over.
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 24-AUG-2004
Media Type: DVD

Amazon.com essential video:
Steven Spielberg's 1993 mega-hit rivals Jaws as the most intense and frightening film he'd ever made prior to Schindler's List, but it was also among his weakest stories. Based on Michael Crichton's novel about an island amusement park populated by cloned dinosaurs, the film works best as a thrill ride with none of the interesting human dynamics of Spielberg's Jaws. That lapse proves unfortunate, but there's no shortage of raw terror as a rampaging T-rex and nasty raptors try to make fast food out of the cast. The effects are still astonishing (despite the fact that the computer-generated technology has since been improved upon) and at times primeval, such as the sight of a herd of whatever-they-are scampering through a valley. --Tom Keogh

Steven Speilberg dose it again. he directed a terrific movie that know one will forget. this has to be his best movie since e.t. i love this movie and so will you. recommend it for everyone

Average Rating:

Rating: - Welcome To Jurassic Park
Steven Speilberg dose it again. he directed a terrific movie that know one will forget. this has to be his best movie since e.t. i love this movie and so will you. recommend it for everyone

Rating: - Still holds up
Please note that this is on the movie which I saw on HBO a few days ago, not on the DVD transfer, so I can't speak to the quality of that.

I would like to make a few comments on the video and animation, though. I just saw the movie again for the first time since it came out, and I have to say it still holds up very well from the standpoint of the special effects and animation. Certainly, the CGI effects are better today, but for the time this was state of the art.

The dinosaurs are realistically rendered, and movement is very fluid and realistic also. One difference between then and now is that high level optical effects still weren't very highly developed, such as the ability to render certain kinds of reflections, such as those involving chromatic aberration and specular highlights, and the ray-tracing programs were not as technically capable. But overall this is still an impressive movie from the standpoint of the special effects.

The dinosaurs were seamlessly inserted into the Jurassic backgrounds with the humans, and the movie benefited from the revolution in dinosaur theory that began back in the 70s with the new ideas about dinosaurs being much more agile and faster and possibly even warm blooded. The paleontologist, played by Sam Neill, even suggests that they had the ability to communicate through calls like birds and mammals. Today, it is thought that mammals like foxes, not just primates, have as many as 50 distinct calls.

As to the other things like the acting, it was fine but let's face it, the dinosaurs were the real stars here and I think they upstaged the more advanced mammals in the flick, and my vote goes to them for their performance. :-) But I have always liked actor Sam Neill and this might be his most famous role as the enthusiastic and intrepid dinosaur expert. And Mr. Attenborough is always good in whatever he does.

Overall still a great adventure classic that still holds up well today.

By the way, if you like animated flicks, I have to put in a plug here for the movie, "The Battle for Terra." It's an independently produced fully animated movie that didn't receive wide distribution, since it was done by Hollywood outsiders. But it's a beautiful and visually appealing movie about a war between a peaceful race and warlike humans who attack their planet. If you compare it with say, "Titan A.E." from almost ten years ago, you can see how much the animation technology has changed in that time. "Titan A.E.," although great for its time, looked more like an animated cartoon. This movie looks like they're shooting actual 3D models, the figures and sets are so realistic and lifelike. It's a totally different world, literally.

Even technically difficult lighting effects such as simple and complex reflection and refraction such as specular highlights are rendered realistically, which many world-class painters have trouble rendering (Vermeer and van Eyck are two of the greats who could do this well). As if this wasn't enough, at the very end of the movie, amazingly, some erudite visual jokester inserted chromatic distortions that look like the internal reflections typical of compound optical lenses, which various high-tech optical coatings are designed to minimize, as if the movie was shot with a real film camera. Too funny.

So if you're into CGI stuff I can recommend this movie also.

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Rating: - Should be buried with the dinosaurs, which didn't exist...
This film is silly! Taking the preposterous notion of recreating something like a dinosaur from ages old DNA is just a warping of scientific theory, not fact. Also, who says what color dinsaurs were? The not so special effects that every one raved about are terrible, actors pretending that something is there that isn't only to be superimposed later is poorly done. Roger Rabbit and Bob Hoskins did it well as Roger had to act as though Bob was there when he wasn't and did really well, proper eye contact too. No, Jurassic park is badly scripted, based on poor science, badly acted and cheap looking. Don't waste your time and money on this over-hyped cheese. For a better exploration of the dinosaur look at Baby.

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Rating: - Good times.
This movie is so dear to me. Its one of those films where every couple of years you just feel like seeing. For all who don't know jurassic park is about really rich man that funds a science team that finds out how to make dinosaurs. He plans to open a theme park, the worlds most successful one, so he gets two archaeologists to ok the park for him or teach the other people about dinosaurs what they eat, what the can't eat etc. But then every thing goes wrong (the good part). The dinosaurs go lose and on a killing spree....oh yea. If you want to hear more then i guess i just sold a movie.

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Rating: - A Great Movie, Made With Dino DNA! Highly Recommended
The original Jurassic Park movie remains my favorite of the three in the series. Released in 1993, this was one of the first movies to heavily use CGI effects seamlessly in conjunction with live action. The overall effect is nothing short of unbelievable or, more to the point, totally believable dinosaurs interacting with humans.

The movie's plot centers on a Paleontologist (well played by Sam Neill) who is hired to give his stamp of approval on a new "Theme" park ahead of its grand opening. There is also good casting and acting from Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum (a good fit as a "Chaos-tician"), Samuel L. Jackson (way underutilized), and Richard Attenborough (very likeable as the entrepreneur, John Hammond). Rounding out the main cast are two kids (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello as Hammond's grandchildren) and an annoying programmer (Wayne Knight, "Newman" from Seinfeld).

The movie does require some suspension of disbelief and acceptance of pseudoscience but overall the plot is strong and the effects are believable.

Once the action starts in this movie it really doesn't let up until the very end. This is one of the few movies that has the ability to keep you literally on the edge of your seat. I have "nervous" people in my family who can't watch the movie all of the way through because the tempo of the action is so intense. For that same reason it is one of my teenager's favorite movies.

Highly Recommended!


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