Twenty years ago, Steven Spielberg brought us Jurassic Park, a film that would spark a generation’s love for dinosaurs. Now the film has been brought back to the big screen (as many films have been recently) in glorious, headache-causing 3D. And let me say, it’s a fantastic experience to see the movie on the big screen, an opportunity I was denied simply because I wasn’t born yet.
The film…well, everyone knows what the film is about. Or at least they should. An entrepreneur named John Hammond (played by the great Richard Attenborough) figures out how to clone dinosaurs and begins breeding them to make a huge, dinosaur zoo/theme park. However, as any park of this nature would experience, Hammond must first have the attraction inspected by several dinosaur scientists, a mathematician, a lawyer, and his grandkids (who have a knack for putting themselves in danger). As one would expect, the dinosaurs break out and all hell breaks loose.
The film still has all of the things that made the original a classic: Wayne Knight’s fat antics, John Williams iconic score, and Jeff Goldblum being sarcastic and seductive. But everyone has seen the movie (if you haven’t you really owe it to yourself, and also WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU), so the real question is “is it worth paying to see this in 3D?” The answer is a surprising yes. The film is incredibly enhanced by being on a big screen: the sound is fantastic and the special effects have stood the test of time incredibly well. The movie could look like it came out this year if it wasn’t for all of the old school technology that the characters think is cutting edge (it’s almost adorable watching them get excited over an interactive CD-ROM). The 3D (and I hate using the phrase) is astonishingly immersive, as at times it feels like you’re are in the movie. I know that’s an incredibly cliché thing to say, but it’s how I felt watching this film.
Jurassic Park proves that a movie re-released in 3D does have some value, and it stands to this day as being an excellent, adventuresome movie about a group of people trying to run away from dinosaurs.
