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Leapin’ Lizards! David Denby’s 1993 Review of Jurassic Park


Our original 1993 review found well-crafted, if cynically-deployed, thrills.

Jurassic Park, based on the Michael Crichton best-seller, is an evolutionary joke: Man, the master of the universe, has become mere flesh, consumed by animals allegedly too stupid to survive. In its mixture of excitement, wit, and fear, Jurassic Park comes close to Jaws, though the calculation involved in Spielberg’s recent big-machine approach to moviemaking can be depressing. In the movie’s prologue, the raptors, so vicious they have to be caged (we can’t see them yet) devour a man, which recaps the opening of Jaws, when a young female swimmer is mysteriously thrust up out of the water by an unseen force and then violently pulled below.

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From the Archives: David Denby on Beverly Hills Cop (1984)