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Generally favorable reviews - based on 20 Critics What's this?

User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 220 Ratings

  • Starring: Laura Dern, Sam Neill
  • Summary: Featuring incredible special effects and action-packed drama, Jurassic Park takes you to a remote island where an amazing theme park with living dinosaurs is about to turn deadly, as five people must battle to survive among the prehistoric predators. (Universal Pictures)
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 20
  2. Negative: 1 out of 20
  1. One great monster movie. [11 June 1993, Daily Notebook, p.C1]
  2. 75
    The movie delivers all too well on its promise to show us dinosaurs. We see them early and often, and they are indeed a triumph of special effects artistry, but the movie is lacking other qualities that it needs even more, such as a sense of awe and wonderment, and strong human story values.
  3. The suspense and technical wizardry are the only reason to watch Jurassic Park. In a summer movie, that's more than enough, of course. But screenwriter Michael Crichton, adapting his popular novel with David Koepp, slashes almost everything that made the book an entertaining read.
  4. Perfectly passable kiddie escapism. It has a thrill or two, and a chill or three, but it has no poetry, little sense of wonder, no resonant subtext (Jungian or otherwise), no art... When it's over, it's gone. Extinct.

See all 20 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 62 out of 67
  2. Negative: 3 out of 67
  1. As a wide-eyed 13 yr old boy gripping the theater armrests with white knuckles, I remember this film rewiring my brain as I watched it. I walked out a changed person, never to view movies the same way again. The good ones... the truly special ones... aren't just something to watch. They transport you to another world. They take you away and cleanse you of the drudgery of reality. They nestle into your memory and never leave. Jurassic Park was the first film to affect me in this way and I'll never forget that feeling. Much obliged, Mr. Spielberg! Expand
  2. 8
    I wish the movie lived up to its classic score, but it doesn't. However, it is a groundbreaking picture that is filled with adventure and action. Entertaining and at times, epic. Expand
  3. In a generation where Jurassic Park was the pinnacle of CGI, its hard not to admire this thrilling and suspenseful adventure, but there are stumbling blocks which stopped this film from reaching its full potential.
    When a wealthy visionary (Richard Attenborough) needs expert approval before he can open is state of the art biological theme park, he turns to palaeontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and paleobotonist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) for approval, due to the fact that there are living, breathing dinosaurs on the park, cloned from DNA of the creatures millions of years before.
    What ensues is greed, corruption, and the goal of wanting to be remembered as revolutionising how humans and dinosaurs can co-exist.
    When a power cut drops all security defences on the enclosures, its a fight for life against beautifully rendered prehistoric creatures.
    The build and tension is here, but its when the dinosaurs actually make an appearance that the movie start to become a little bland and it almost seems rushed, even though this is 120min plus film.
    Spielberg has created mastery in telling an excellent story, but the chemistry between the characters feels to forced and unnecessary, and it seemed premature to put Jeff Goldblum's eccentric character out of use so early with a bad leg.
    Saying that, the performances of Neill and Dern are strong, but the device of using shock and awe/wait for amazement does tend to overpower these performances.
    Its excellent for its generation, certainly better than the second instalment, but could have reached heights had it not been for a more concerning promotion of the technology at work here, a milestone of its own behalf, but could easily have been better.
    Expand
  4. EricJ
    0
    The most overrated movie of all time.

See all 67 User Reviews

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