While it’s hard for many of us (myself included) to believe it’s been 20 years since we first entered the massive gates of Jurassic Park, it’s true. And now Universal Pictures is marking the milestone with a special high-definition, state-of-the-art 3D release of one of the biggest blockbusters of all time. But how does it measure up to a movie lover’s high expectations?

While I’m not a fan of the studios revamping all the classics with 3D special effects for their re-releases, I have to say Jurassic Park is decidedly one of the few that I was excited about. In fact, my boyfriend and I have been counting down to its release for quite some time. My first reaction was one of pure delight. Epic dinosaurs on the big screen in 3D? That’s like every nerdy child’s fantasy come true.

When this movie first came out in 1993, I was 11 years old and sadly I never got to experience it on the big screen. I remember my parents renting it from our local video store, as we did with most movies (especially Steven Spielberg blockbusters) back then. Sometimes I really miss those days of rental movie magic, going to a store full of videos and promise. I sometimes get nostalgic for a hot, buttered bowl of microwaveable popcorn on my lap and the heady thrill of childhood anticipation that can be often imitated but never quite duplicated the older that I get.

Jurassic Park is one of those special movies that only comes along once in a great while and touches our hearts, terrifies us and sparks our imagination all at the same time. Starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Samuel L. Jackson and Richard Attenborough, the film is based on the novel by Michael Crichton and won numerous awards when it was first released.

While I’m sure many of you are already familiar with the plot, I feel obligated to briefly touch upon it for those among us who are too young to remember its initial release. In a nutshell, Jurassic Park is about a rich old man who has paid scientists to clone dinosaurs extracting their DNA found in mosquitoes preserved in amber. It’s this man’s dream to open an interactive theme park on a private island and present these long-extinct creatures to the general public. But in order to do so, he must first gain the endorsements of some of the biggest experts in the field.

He invites a well-respected prehistoric botanist, a paleontologist, an eccentric chaos theorist, his greedy lawyer and his grandchildren to be his park’s guinea pigs. The chaos theorist (played extremely well by Goldblum) is very cynical and believes that the park will prove to be more than they bargained for due to chaos theory. He’s pretty much right on the money, but that’s half the fun of the movie.

Now, we come to my critique of the 3D effects. While I have to say I was a tad disappointed that more things weren’t popping out at me, overall I remained satisfied throughout the movie. After all, I was finally seeing Jurassic Park in all of its big-screen glory. But to the parents who brought children under 5 (and in one case, a crying baby) to my early showing, you might want to skip this one until your kids are a little older.

I’ve seen this movie countless times and yet I still jumped during one of the 3D scenes with the Velociraptors. Those things really give me the creeps even to this day. And of course, you can’t leave out the all-mighty T-Rex and the infamous scene in the jeep with the shaking glass of water on the dashboard alerting you to his mammoth presence.

All in all, Jurassic Park 3D is a thrill ride for movie lovers of all ages. The dinosaurs have never looked more intimidating and I think the 3D really enhances the master storytelling and powerful special effects that is classic Spielberg at his best. I had also forgotten just how many quotable gems come from this movie, including my personal favorite: “God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs … Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth …”

Score one for Universal Pictures, Steven Spielberg and the inner nerd in all of us who still gets excited about the prospect of dinosaurs. With all the recent news reports about scientists closing in on cloning the extinct wooly mammoth, I am left to wonder is a concept like Jurassic Park really all that far-fetched anymore? If this movie has taught us anything, it’s that perhaps some aspects of evolution and technology are better left to a movie maker’s imagination.

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