Ask any­one who knows me about my fond­ness and utter boy­hood joy for movies and most likely you’ll begin to piece together per­sonal frag­ments that ulti­mately led to the per­son I am today.

Like Michael, I’m like a kid in a candy store — gnaw­ing on an enor­mous Gob­stop­per — when it comes to watch­ing movies, espe­cially those rare cin­e­matic expe­ri­ences where you feel as if you’re a part of what’s occur­ing on screen.

There are very few movies that have immersed me in such a vivid man­ner that when I’m amongst the audi­ence I for­get about real­ity until the cred­its appear on screen. One such movie, which debuted in the early 90s, totally cap­ti­vated me at the time as well as reminded me what a good movie could be.

Sev­eral months prior to the offi­cial open­ing of the movie I can remem­ber strolling past the card­board dis­play, a medium-sized adver­tise­ment with a jeep and the words “Juras­sic Park: An Adven­ture 65 Mil­lion Years in the Making”.

At the time, my brother and I stopped dead in our tracks and just exam­ined the adver­tise­ment won­der­ing to our­selves whether or not it was a dinosaur movie or a cheesy hor­ror flick. Despite our attempts to fig­ure out what the movie was about, I do remem­ber think­ing that the logo was fan­tas­tic, a silo­huette of a dinosaur on a blood red back­ground with huge bold let­ters, that alone guar­an­teed our pres­cence at the film’s release.

How­ever, there was one tiny detail I had ini­tially over­looked upon first glanc­ing at the card­board stand, that Juras­sic Park was not only going to be a movie about dinosaurs, but that Steven Spiel­berg was direct­ing. I decided then and there, with­out a moment’s hes­i­ta­tion, that I was going to see this movie, no mat­ter what.

After doing some more research on the film, which if I remem­ber cor­rectly, con­sisted of watch­ing every enter­tain­ment medium that I could, it was revealed that not only was this going to be a movie about dinosaurs, it was going to be about a “dinosaur amuse­ment park”. In my opin­ion, mix­ing giant rep­tiles of the past with Dis­ney­land seemed like a superb idea.

Hav­ing no prior knowl­edge of the book I decided to pur­chase it and read it before the movie, some­thing I try to avoid since they rarely ever com­pli­ment eachother. A few chap­ters into Juras­sic Park my eyes glazed over and I tossed the book aside in dis­be­lief and frankly dis­ap­point­ment, mainly because of the long pas­sages of text deal­ing strictly with med­ical ter­mi­nol­ogy and the fact that the story itself dragged on.

Luck­ily, Steven Spiel­berg and crew took cre­ative lib­er­ties with the story, some­thing I was happy with con­sid­er­ing the orig­i­nal sto­ry­line, while sim­i­lar and I sup­pose appeal­ing to some read­ers, wasn’t exactly “adven­ture” mate­r­ial (years later I would end up chang­ing my mind, after read­ing the book cover-to-cover).

The movie Juras­sic Park, unlike it’s book coun­ter­part, was sim­ply one of the most ener­getic and visu­ally mind-blowing cin­e­matic expe­ri­ences since Star Wars. The break­through CGI, bring­ing to life dinosaurs you could only imag­ine before­hand, made these dinosaurs seem life­like and in some instances down­right hor­rific, espe­cially the T-Rex and Raptors.

Almost 13 years later, I’ve since revis­ited Juras­sic Park, hav­ing watched the DVD and air­ings of the movie on tele­vi­sion and I’m still cap­ti­vated by it. The per­for­mances are and char­ac­ters them­selves are stel­lar, espe­cially that of Ian Mal­colm as played by Jeff “The Fly” Gold­blum. He plays the neu­rotic, know-it-all char­ac­ter in many films and pulls it off par­tic­u­larly well in JP. The spe­cial effects, which were pin­na­cle at the time, still remain con­vinc­ing and dramatic.

Juras­sic Park is and was truly one of the most ful­fill­ing movie expe­ri­ences that I’ve ever wit­nessed and because of the amount of detail and the thrilling aspects to the film it’ll always remain a clas­sic, earn­ing its spot next to other won­der­ful movies that will be watched and remem­bered by gen­er­a­tions to come, mark my word.