_Jurassic Park_


     Jeff Goldblum has definitely got this awkward, uncanny scientist
routine down. In Spielberg's much-anticipated blockbuster-to-be, _Jurassic
Park_, where he plays a mathematician who finds himself being hunted by
dinosaurs, his strangeness approaches _Fly_-like dimensions. He dresses in
black, wears thick pointy glasses, and speaks in emphatic drolleries.
"Yeah," he offers when someone compares the dinosaurs amuck to any theme
park mishap, "but when Pirates of the Carribean breaks down, the pirates
don't eat the tourists." 

     There's something both ingenious and cynical in this joke, in its
oblique reference to the film itself as all-consuming commercial venture:
prepare to be eaten by _Jurassic Park_. Prodigiously clever, the film
makes pre-emptive allusions to its own money-mindedness, including a slow
pan of the park gift shop: rows of t-shirts, lunchboxes, dishes, toys,
books, and other "Jurassic stuff" (the sales of which are expected to
exceed $1 billion). 

     That is, aside from Goldblum's unsquelchable goldblumness, this is
clearly a movie without complex human components: as any McDonald's tie-in
cup will alert you, this is a movie about dinosaurs. These come in various
styles and sizes, made of scale models, full-size models, and frankly
dazzling computer effects. Given that marketing plans began in 1990, when
Universal bought the rights to Michael Crichton's novel (then in galleys),
watching the film feels a bit like collusion. 

     Even this uneasiness is built back into the movie, providing its
slim, moralistic plotline. Voiced by Goldblum as Dr. Malcom, the point is
that one shouldn't mess with nature: "the dinosaurs had their shot." Here
they have one more, of course, and the effects (a combination of models
and computer digitizing) are frankly astonishing. But they tend to
overwhelm the human roles, which are reduced to reaction shots and
reprises of Spielberg's past successes. 

     Rich and clueless, park-owner Hammond (Richard Attenborough) imagines
that an electric-car tour through the area occupied by (vegetarian)
Brachiosauri and (carnivorous) Tyrannasaurus Rexes will be snagless. The
computer system fails (due to a villain's crass self-interest: why doesn't
that surprise you?) and those on the tour (including Hammond's
grandchildren and dino-specialists Alan Grant [Sam Neill] and Ellie
Sattler [Laura Dern]) are potential lunch. 

     Though the ever-erceptive Malcom/Goldblum immediately calls the
genetic engineering (cloning) which produces the dinosaurs a "rape of
nature," the others need convincing. Ellie is portrayed from the start as
a naive nurturer, a natural mother, opposed to mechanical hands of
unnatural lab-biology. That she is also a paleobotanist (advanced degree)
doesn't preclude her Spielbergian fate as astonished "mom" (see Dee
Wallace in _E.T._). That Ellie wants kids and her boyfriend Alan doesn't
provides a neat plot device (guess who gets stuck with the children once
the hunt begins). 

     Alan is familiar as well, a boyishly wonderstruck scientist of the
Richard-Dreyfuss-in-_Jaws_ variety, only less complex and with _no_ sense
of humor. His part is to explain details of dino-life to the children
(Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello). Other than that, he is a
comparatively unexciting and reluctant Indiana Jones clone, whose love of
dinosaurs occasionally gets in the way of understanding that meat-eating
dinosaurs are relentlessly hungry. 

     The metaphor might have been less obnoxious in 1975 when _Jaws_
opened, without an attendant merchandise frenzy. Spielberg's own famous
"innocence" is part of the packaging. The stakes in 1993 are too high ($60
million) and the sales machinery too efficient to allow for chance. And as
with _Batman_, the merchndise audience is likely not quite the film
audience. Several scenes are nightmare-quality: the kids are abandoned,
hysterical, nearly electrocuted and chewed. 

     So what is this film about? It's about size. Its cautions about the
business-obsessiveness that Spielberg calls "the American way" are
certainly less relevant than the first weekend's boxoffice. Its ironic
self-consciousness is certainly as saleable as the new sound system, DTS
(installed in select theaters), which allows you to feel the thundering
approach of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. In the midst of this, Goldblum's moral
concerns are what seem prehistoric. Laura Dern, after all, will be a big
movie star now.