I guess I'm joining into the chorus of not really loving JURASSIC PARK? That's surprising. I'm a '90s kid I guess (born '88), and I remember it being a huge deal, but thinking (at that age) that the idea of a dinosaur theme park was really lame, and why not just make a real movie about dinosaurs, like LAND BEFORE TIME? As an adult I understand that the concept exists to be a lead-handed metaphor, although I can't say that adds to the appeal. On the other other hand, perhaps dinosaurs in the present day are a scarier concept that a fantasy about dinosaur world - horror being best defined as the invasion of the uncanny into normalcy.
Overall though the movie feels too much like Spielberg by numbers, and watching it fresh just a couple months ago, I was surprised how much of it I know by heart, because I went in thinking "surely there's more to this movie than I remember, because otherwise why would it be considered such a masterpiece?" The characters but for Hammond are paper-thin, and the hammed-up performances are enjoyable but don't exactly alleviate the superficiality. Then there's the fact that our protagonists are deliriously insane, declaring from the moment they hear the concept that Jurassic Park will lead to the apocalypse, unquestionably, and I think at one point I saw Michael Crichton lean into frame and wave. This will affect the sequels in both good and bad ways.
For all the quality execution, too much action is wasted on things that aren't dinosaurs (the car in the tree kinda galls me - it's an immaculately directed and edited sequence, heart-in-throat thrilling, but why are you wasting a set piece in your dinosaur movie on something that doesn't involve dinosaurs!), and even the dinosaur sequences feel incredibly limited - in a way that makes them memorable and scary, yes, but not in a way that takes advantage of the concept and makes for an exciting adventure. A T-rex attacks a car, a brachiosaurus sneezes on a little girl, velociraptors in the kitchen, T-rex smashes T-rex fossil, roll credits. Spielberg is too locked into his idea of a motion picture as a roller coaster for my taste - it works sometimes, and Jurassic Park is still good, but this formula worked a lot better with just a shark.
LOST WORLD I've only seen one-and-a-half times, because the second time I was so disinterested by the midpoint that I turned it off. All I can say is that the idea of centering the story on Doctor Ian Malcolm, a character whose prior existence was solely as a font of pop-science drivel, is a poor one that never stops feeling forced.
Which leaves JP3, the great unsung hero to come save the day and give us a fully satisfying experience. Yes it's dumb, yes it's far removed from the glamourous sheen of the first two, but it's competently and even breezily made, taking no time at all to declare what it's going to be doing with the next 90 minutes of your time. It's just actually unpredictable and fun in a way Spielberg never could be, because his entire career is staked on being The Sure Thing. Yet I can't but be amused as hell at the weird variety of second-tier dinos and the hilarious boldness of the raptor-talking-machine and the Tarzan-of-the-dinosaurs boy. Yup, the ending is dogshit, the cast is fine but forgettable, and some people will not like jokes about a kid jerking off a dinosaur (or something??). But it also has one inarguably great point, which is Sam Neill's better performance as Grant with a much better arc to permit it. Him screwing everything up and becoming a real downer is a great starting point, and we do something more interesting than reiterating the same "learns to love kids, barf" lesson. We see him correct the attitude and mistakes of the first movie and finally realize how wrong they all were at that first awkward dinner party.
(this comment prompted by the weekly podcast chat at the always great Alternate Ending)
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