Jurassic Park

Director: Steven Spielberg (1993)

Starring: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Dinosaurs.

Find it: IMDB

It's one of the greatest movies of all time. And it's been re-released. On the big screen. And not even in stupid 3D. I watched it. Obviously. And it's still one of the greatest movies of all time.

Until yesterday, the original Jurassic Park was the only one of the trilogy I'd not seen on the big screen. What an immense slap to the face for any film fan; to have seen the rubbish Jurassic Park 3 as intended, but not its actually good original bit. I've seen Jurassic Park at least seven times on television, VHS and DVD, but watching it at the cinema seemed like seeing it again for the very first time. Having seen Jurassic Park at the cinema, I can die a happy and complete man (unless, y'know, someone wants to do the same with Tim Burton's Batmen and maybe a few Star Wars).

You know the plot, off've the back of your hand. Gentle but cuckoo entrepreneur Richard Hammond (the Attenborough that isn't David) finds a way to bring dinosaurs back from extinction using mosquito fossils. Builds a park for all of his dinosaurs to live. Invites scientists, grandchildren and a lawyer to visit. The park breaks down. Dinosaurs run riot. Lawyer gets eaten on the toilet. Grumpy fossil fetishist learns to like children. Jeff Goldblum looks exceedingly cool throughout. Chaos reigns.

I swear to Cthulu I was so overjoyed at seeing Jurassic Park in this format that I nearly cried at one point. After all, being a boy of the nineties, Jurassic Park was a massive part of my childhood. I was obsessed with dinosaurs as a child, and obsessed with Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park forever warped my fashion sense. I still dress like Ian Malcolm. When I was thirteen, I owned a pair of leather trousers because I thought that they were the sort of thing that Ian Malcolm would wear. Whenever I go clothes shopping nowadays, a small part of my mind always buys with the motto "WWIMW" (What Would Ian Malcolm Wear?). I even used to scatter my speeches with carefully placed "ums" and "ahs". Thanks a lot Jeff Goldblum. Thanks a lot Jurassic Park, that's why people seem to think I'm a mathematician and a Jeff Goldblum gay. Ian Malcolm is the original man-crush.

Talking of crushes, I don't know why it took me so long to realise that nineties era Laura Dern is well hot. The characters are all beloved to me. I even like the children, and I hate most Spielberg movie children. Wayne Knight is brilliantly slimy as Dennis Nedry (my second favourite character, behind Doctor Malcolm). Jurassic Park harkens back to an era in filmmaking where Samuel L Jackson could die an offscreen death (with hair, no less) and blockbusters were fun. I half expected to leave the cinema and walk out into nineties Birmingham.

Oh sure, I would have liked to have kept Hammond's death scene from the book (although that may have traumatised younger viewers) and the CGI looks a little iffy nowadays, but I love Jurassic Park. Best moviegoing experience of 2011.