Jurassic Park roars back onto the big screen this weekend for a limited two week run, providing the perfect opportunity to relive the wonderment of a six year old version of yourself.
Timed perfectly (suspiciously?) with the dinosaur season on the BBC, the aim of the studio and distributors may well be to capture a new, young audience (and pave the way for the upcoming fourth instalment) but there's no doubt in my mind that this Jurassic Park is one for the adults. Few filmmakers could capture the 80s/90s wonder of Spielberg, and if you've even one ounce of the nostalgia and sentimentality that 'The Beard' possesses, you'll probably already be in the queue to get in, ready to impress your better half with your bizarre and inexplicable knowledge of the diet of a Parasaurolophus.
The film stars Sam Neill as the sceptical palaeontologist who is whisked away (after the promise of extra funding, the greedy swine) with Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern by the ever-lovable Richard Attenborough to an island off the coast of Costa Rica. This is, of course, Jurassic Park, named after the middle-period of the dinosaurs, and by far the most filmic. The film's anti-hero, the T-Rex, actually lived during the latter Cretaceous period (nerd alert) but it's hard to imagine a film called Cretaceous Park.
The rest is history (get it?) but you'd be a fool to miss out on the thrill of seeing this classic piece of filmmaking on the big screen. This is Hollywood at its finest, before all the explosions and swearing got in the way and forced the tasteful blockbuster into near-extinction.
Tom Brown
