BACK COVER SYNOPSIS: Director Steven Spielberg's Jurassic masterpiece is back in this Collector's Edition containing interviews and special behind-the-scenes footage. One of the most successful films in worldwide box office history, Jurassic Park remains a most compelling and spectacular experience. This thrilling adventure features Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough. 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. Rediscover this breathtaking adventure you'll want to experience again and again.

FILM REVIEW: As a technical accomplishment and a pure visual feat of wonder, “Jurassic Park” is nothing short of brilliant and delivers on all counts. As the first big Hollywood film to fully utilise photo-realistic CG animals, in this case dinosaurs, rendered in full daylight and in great detail, this film is a milestone in cinematic history and brought a new sense of wonder to the screen. One can argue that it helped accelerate the CG industry and in turn led to waves of CG-filled films which are nothing but CG brilliance and nothing else, but “Jurassic Park” still deserves its place as a milestone in filmmaking. As a story, it’s not really anything special, nor do the characters inhabiting it extend beyond two dimensions. It appears though that Steven Spielberg was more focused on getting the dinosaurs on screen and one can’t blame him for that since they’re the star of the story and what the audience will come to see the film for. As a monster-movie it’s not altogether original in its execution (with the exception of its high-tech, scientifically possible concepts). What it does have is a ‘wow’ factor of actually seeing real dinosaurs on screen, and some of the most spectacular action sequences you’re likely to see.

“Jurassic Park” is essentially a watered-down version of the novel upon which it’s based by Michael Crichton. In it, two palaeontologists, Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) are convinced to come to an island off Costa Rica owned by enigmatic billionaire and entrepreuner John Hammond (Sir Richard Attenborough) after he offers to fund their dinosaur bone excavations for another three years. When they arrive, they are joined by charming mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) who is a proponent of chaos theory which basically states that life is inherently unpredictable and any attempt to control it will fail. They arrive at the island where Hammond reveals his big secret; that he has created a theme park filled with genetically engineered dinosaurs, created from blood extracted from prehistoric mosquitoes. Grant and Sattler are in awe of what they are seeing, while Malcolm’s initial awe gives way to pessimism as he explains how Hammond’s attempt to control this island full of creatures will fail. Well, as you guessed it, thanks to an insider working for Hammond (played by Wayne Knight) who disables the security systems in order to get some embryo specimens unnoticed off the island to a rival company, the dinosaurs are set loose and proceed to make the island their own, and devouring any one in their path.

The central sci-fi concept of how the dinosaurs are brought back is an original and exciting one that the film shares with the book. It’s not silly, and it allows dinosaurs to be brought in to the present day without resorting to a ‘lost world’ type of approach. However, the film does get burdened with a lot of exposition pertaining to it (an aspect it inherited from the book) and especially in the first half of the film, things can be a little slow going as everything gets explained. Spielberg does his best to keep things moving along but ultimately you have to wait for at least an hour before you get to see the more scary, interesting sequences. The exposition is broken up by the first appearance of a dinosaur on screen, which is very effective as it invites you to join in the awe that the characters are experiencing. There’s also the birth of a velociraptor which is quite intriguing.

The characters are a big let down. Oddly enough, they have more depth than in the novel but even so, there’s not a whole lot going on there. The characters are there either to explain things or be dino-food. As a monster-movie that might not necessarily be a bad thing but that way it’s done gives you quite a dry, couldn’t care less feeling and thus the scares a bit more mechanical rather than dramatically thrilling. I guess for this first outing the concept of seeing dinosaurs on screen outweighs this shortcoming but it does knock the film down back a peg or two.

Of course, the selling point for this film is the monster-movie sequences featuring the dinosaurs running amok. There’s the opening sequence where a velociraptor almost escapes but manages to eat a worker in the process. Spielberg shoots this quite eerily, and in one section one of the game hunters and the raptor eye-ball each other. Then there’s the T-Rex sequences; the first is the attack on the cars when it escapes from its pen which is astonishing to watch. Then there’s the scene where it chases a jeep with Malcolm in the back coming within inches of being eaten. And there’s the big finale where the T-Rex actually saves our characters by diverting the raptors away from them. The sequences with the raptors are more thrilling, as they have a razor-sharp intelligence, particularly when they are chasing the two kids through a kitchen. This might be unfair of me to say but there were several sequences in the book which I would have liked to have seen on screen which I felt left me wanting more, but then they couldn’t do everything. I guess that’s what sequels are for right?

“Jurassic Park” is a memorable, entertaining film; there’s just no depth or any attempt to do anything more aside from creating the dinosaurs. In the end, it’s more or less a spectacular technical accomplishment rather than a great film which it could have been if more work had been done on the characters or story execution.

TECHNICAL REVIEW: The video transfer looks reasonably good for the most part, or there are some film minor film scratches at the beginning and some minor jumps which is a bit disappointing given the technical accomplishments of the film. This might be because there’s a fairly big extras package and all of it is squeezed on to one disc. I guess in this respect the transfer is quite reasonable. The colours look great though, particularly in any of the shots with the dinosaurs. The soundtrack is really where this transfer shines; crank the volume up on the first T-Rex attack sequence, it’s as good a benchmark as any for what your 5.1 surround sound system can do. Overall, the picture transfer is great but could have been better, and the soundtrack is spectacular.

EXTRAS REVIEW: Given this is a single disc edition, we get a fairly vast collection of extras. The heart of the package is the 50 minute documentary hosted by James Earl Hones on the making of the film which serves as a great insight in to the production, with great cast and crew interviews. You can also tell from this doco where the focus of the film was for its makers, namely the dinosaurs. There isn’t much discussion about character, or much of the story for that matter aside from having to ‘crunch’ the book to a 2-hour running time which is evidently reflected in the film itself. There’s a nice featurette with Spielberg discussing with Stan Winston’s team about how the animals were to be seen on screen, as well as a location scout featurette. Both of these are poorly shot (its basically handycam footage) but it’s still interesting nonetheless. There's also original animatics and storyboards, trailers, foley artist featurette, dinosaur encyclopedia, production notes, cast & filmmakers notes and weblinks. Overall, a great collection for only a single disc DVD.

BOTTOM LINE: Worth having in the collection.