It’s hard to review a movie that you’ve known by heart for 20 years.
Jurassic Park, like many of Spielberg’s films, is a hurricane of emotion. There are moments of the film so overwhelming, still, after all these years, that move me to tears.
So when I had the opportunity to see it in IMAX 3D, I leapt at the chance.
For many, post-conversion 3D isn’t anything you want to see, I get that, but the chance to see Jurassic Park in a way that’s literally larger than life and on the big screen once more is not an opportunity to pass up. They’ve clearly spared no expense and the experience doesn’t disappoint.
If you liked Jurassic Park to begin with, you’re going to love this experience, but you’ll be shocked by how much you notice, see, and hear that had just slipped you by. Lines of dialogue that I didn’t even know existed popped right out of the soundtrack. But I’d forgotten how brilliant the sound design of this film was in general. The dinosaurs, on a good sound system, are truly frightening.
The other major thing I noticed in a way that isn’t immediately apparent on home video was how dated some of the costumes and bits are in the film. In particular are the anonymous Jurassic Park employees in pastel polo shirts, or the kids. Lexi, Hammond’s granddaughter, seems to have the most outdated dialogue as well as clothes, “It’s an interactive CD-Rom!” or “This is a Unix system, I know this!”
There were very few moments of the post conversion that seemed to bother me. Chief among them was a few shots of Muldoon as he’s stalking the raptors toward the end of the movie. There are disparate bits of foliage so close to the screen that it’s distracting and it’s largely because the film just wasn’t intended to be 3D. There were a couple of other fixes I did notice, too. Mainly it was the reflected light of the flares Malcom and Grant use to distract the T-rex. In the original theatrical release they seem to be holding the flares three inches from a piece of glass, but that extra bit of reflection seems to have been removed in this release.
As for the suspense and excitement of the rest of the film, it holds up so well that I’m shocked. Had any other filmmaker made this film, it would have been easily hailed as their best work, but since this is Steven Spielberg, he has movies like Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark that manage to top it.
There is, however, nothing quite like seeing a dinosaur for the first time in this movie. It might be one of the greatest moments in cinema history.
If you love Jurassic Park, you’re a fool if you miss this. If you’ve never seen it, you’re doubly foolish if you miss it.