Hold Onto Your Butts
Does Jurassic Park stand the test of time? Also, some thoughts on Taylor Swift's NEXT thing.
Welcome back to a semi-regular feature here at Drinks With Broads called Does It Hold Up? wherein Heather and I put on our hardhats and investigate abandoned buildings to assure ourselves of their structural integrity — wait, I’m sorry, that’s incorrect. We revisit beloved pop culture artifacts to see how they’ve aged. Previously: Moonlighting. Today, please hold onto your butts, because we’re heading back to Jurassic Park.
Jurassic Park is the 1993 Steven Spielberg-helmed adaptation of the Michael Crichton bestseller about, essentially, what a bad idea it is to mess with nature and how you definitely should not clone dinosaurs and then try to control them, whether for your own intellectual curiosity or for money. It’s also very much about the act of wearing khaki. (An interesting bit of trivia: Spielberg had to supervise post-production on Jurassic Park while he was in Poland filming Schindler’s List. I cannot imagine the tonal whiplash of this workload, although perhaps spending a few hours watching velociraptors menace Laura Dern was good for his headspace, as filming Schindler’s List had to have been emotionally fraught.) Basically: An old dinosaur-loving business magnate (Sir Richard Attenborough) figured out a way to de-extinct dinosaurs and accordingly made a theme park for random yahoos to eyeball them. One weekend during what is supposed to be a safety inspection for the park’s investors — which is conveniently also attended by two children, two paleontologists (Sam Neill and Laura Dern; Ross Geller had plans), and a “chaos theory expert” (sure) (Jeff Goldblum) — Things Go Terribly Awry thanks to the combination of a hurricane and the greedy exploits of the park’s One Computer Guy, Newman from Seinfeld. Dinosaurs get out of their enclosures and, newsflash: THEY’RE PISSED.
Released in the summer of 1993, Jurassic Park was a massive hit, with a huge marketing budget and a shit-ton of tie-ins behind it, including “a traveling exhibition called ‘The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park’... showcasing dinosaur skeletons and film props.” To date, it has made $1.029 billion, and from 1993 to 1997 was the highest grossing film in history. (Titanic sailed by and swiftly surpassed it, but Jurassic Park is still holding steady at 43 on the all-time list.) I was just about to graduate from high school when Jurassic Park came out, and like everyone else I knew at the time, I saw it in the theater. I have vivid memories of (a) being very scared of velociraptors, even though I didn’t technically didn’t know if they were real,1 and (b) my friend John’s spot-on velociraptor impersonation. Although I’d seen bits and pieces on TV between now and 1993, this past weekend was the first time I’d sat down to watch Jurassic Park in its entirety in over 30 years. Beware of spoilers below.
WHAT HOLDS UP:
I don’t want to ruin my final ruling here but….
— Basically Everything. Jurassic Park is still a tightly-plotted 122 minutes of dinosaurs trying to eat people, and occasionally looking majestic while everyone else gets increasingly stressed out. The scenes where the T.Rex menaces Richard Attenborough’s grandchildren are still remarkably tense, even on my TV and even though I knew they made it out alive.
It’s the quintessential summer popcorn movie, the likes of which Spielberg has nailed artfully so many times before.2 It’s still fast-moving, expensive, expansive, escapist, surprising, and, most of all, fun.
– The performances are uniformly decent to excellent. Spielberg is famously good with child actors and little Joseph Mazzello is great. Ariana Richards as his sister, Lex — who does save the day thanks to her “hacking skills” — is probably the weakest acting link, but she’s not bad as much as merely competent. It’s fun to see a super young B.D Wong, as a smug biologist (or something? It’s not important) who I assume later faced federal charges for cloning dinosaurs. Samuel L. Jackson’s delivery of “hold onto your butts” is so iconic that he gets to say it twice.
Wayne Knight is perfectly Newman-y as the One Computer Guy whose plot to steal from the park goes terribly, terribly off the rails. Richard Attenborough’s character is technically probably not the best dude in the world, but he plays him with so much warmth that you have to feel bad for him when all his dinos start ravaging his private island. And while I didn’t buy into Laura Dern and Sam Neill’s romance — these two do not have chemistry; Dern started dating Jeff Goldblum during the film and you can tell — they’re both assured performers. Speaking of, Jeff Goldblum is, naturally, a hoot.
– The message. Jurassic Park’s overarching message is basically that humans need to have more respect for the natural world, and that seems to be more salient now than ever. Also it’s definitely still true that cloning dinosaurs is probably a bad idea. I also appreciated Laura Dern’s Ellie being so matter-of-factly feminist – a viewpoint bolstered by the fact that she and Lex do get to play massive roles in saving everyone’s lives.
– The special effects. Per the film’s Wiki, “The dinosaurs were created with groundbreaking computer-generated imagery by Industrial Light & Magic, and with life-sized animatronic dinosaurs built by Stan Winston's team. To showcase the film's sound design, which included a mixture of various animal noises for the dinosaur sounds, Spielberg invested in the creation of DTS, a company specializing in digital surround sound formats.” I remembered the dinosaurs feeling VERY realistic but assumed that, seen through older eyes that have now known advanced CGI, they would now seem janky and old-looking. Au contraire!
They’re definitely not perfect but the special effects are still remarkably good — and I’d actually argue that the animatronics feel somehow more alive and present than the CGI we’d get today3. That Stan Winston knew what he was doing.
WHAT DOESN’T HOLD UP:
– I guess Samuel L. Jackson’s character would not be a chain-smoker if this movie were made today. I’d also argue that the film’s one big flaw is that his character dies off-screen. And, indeed, per Wiki, “Samuel L. Jackson was to film a lengthy death scene where his character is chased and killed by raptors, but the set was destroyed by Hurricane Iniki.” Ironic that a movie in which the destructive nature of a hurricane wreaks havoc then had havoc wrought upon it by a real hurricane. I am relieved to know that everyone involved with this movie knew it was an error to kill this character off-screen.
– The subplot of Sam Neill maybe not wanting kids. This C plot — Laura Dern would like to have children one day, Sam Neill isn’t enthused — works in the sense that Sam Neill turns out to be good with the kids in the film, and it’s smart to have some subtext there from a storytelling perspective beyond just “it would be bad if children got eaten by a dinosaur.” But, as I mentioned above, despite the fact that they are both very hot, Dern and Neill do not have any real romantic chemistry, whereas she clearly is about to start giggling every time Jeff Goldblum talks to her. I cannot remember if I felt invested in their romantic future way back in 1993, but I low-key doubt this familial subplot ever totally worked.
– Being a hacker. There is a lot of Early '90s Computer Tomfoolery in this movie and most of it holds up fine because you don’t need to understand it in the first place — they gotta figure out how to turn the electrical and security systems back on, that’s all you need to know — but there is also a wealth of dialogue about “being a hacker” and “hacking computers.” Today’s Youngs will never understand how the concept of being a hacker had a real chokehold on America from 1991-2003. I wouldn’t say this is, like, problematic or anything, but it does feel very Of a Time.
WHAT KIND OF HOLDS UP:
The shorts. Look, ten years ago we’d all be making fun of everyone’s khaki shorts and denim-on-denim and ‘90s Safari Fashion, but those looks have come back around and I think the costumes have sort of started working again. At the very least, you can definitely buy Laura Dern’s shorts on J.Crew right now. (We also need to shout-out her sensible hiking boots; no dumb running around in high heels happening in this version.) On the other hand Martin Ferrero’s tweed shorts suit was never supposed to hold up, and he was punished for that sartorial crime by being eaten by a T.Rex while sitting on a toilet.
THE OVERALL VERDICT: Rush to return to Jurassic Park before it leaves Netflix at the end of the month. You will not regret it. And it just might save you from opening up that Woolly Mammoth theme park you’ve been percolating.
— Jessica
What Should Taylor Swift Do Next?
There are certain things recently that I thought would NEVER be expunged from the news cycle, but I should have had faith; I knew Taylor Swift had a new album coming, and should have anticipated the extent to which it would be a pop-culture tidal wave, slamming those of us in the middle with a cacophony of people for whom she can do no wrong and people for whom she can do no right, often all yelling at each other. The latter of whom seemed particularly excited to announce themselves this weekend, given that The Tortured Poets Department seems to be... you know, mostly sorta… fine?
Here’s the thing: I think MOST albums in their entirety are often… mostly sorta fine. Am I crazy? I guess I consider it a lucky thing, a lightning strike, when an artist drops something that’s genuinely wall-to-wall bangers, much like it’s a challenge to make a tight season of TV where zero episodes flail or feel like filler. There are almost always some rough patches. Not every chapter of a book is brilliance; not every painting in a gallery is great. It happens. Big deal. Plus, with music, these things typically take a minute — even people who loved all of Cowboy Carter from the jump are developing new, unexpected favorites — and may even require you to be in a certain headspace to connect at all. I wasn’t sure about Taylor’s folklore and evermore at first, but I tried them out during Covid and they became the soothing soundtrack of my solo housecleaning, and now rank among my favorites. But I never finished Midnights, much less the extended version, and I haven’t heard any of the bonus tracks on Taylor’s last several records. I think that’s a big part of the collective shrug from the middle-ground of Swift listeners: There’s just so much right now — Eras, re-records, vault songs, and now a double album in the midst of all that — that the market is saturated, and this perhaps doesn’t feel as necessary or different enough. I keep thinking Taylor must’ve had a ticking clock on delivering this. Or, if you want to get conspiracy-minded, that she’s pretty sure she and Travis Kelce are going to take the plunge, so she wanted to exorcise all her remaining relationship demons in a hurry. Fair enough, but art is also often better with distance, and thus, perspective.
I digress; I promise this is going somewhere unserious. Mostly, when I saw that Taylor added a second Tortured Poets part consisting of 15 songs, bringing the track list to 31, I thought to myself, “She would benefit from an editor.” I had a longish drive on Friday and still only made it through 16 of the songs, and that was with at least one that I got bored of and skipped. Someone on Reddit called the album a run-on sentence, and that’s not inaccurate to me, at least sonically. And at times lyrically. Taylor doesn’t seem to have anyone in her camp who’s helping her kill her darlings; her many, many songs are wallpapered with words, and I think she loves them all too much. I will always appreciate that she plays with language, but some of these lyrics in particular REALLY fall into the “it’s a text, not a tweet” camp where she needed someone to gently sit her down and be like, “Maybe keep that one for yourself.” And this, mind you, is coming from someone who won’t use 10 words where she could use 100. We had to cut the first draft of The Royal We nearly in half before we got official edit notes. Thus, I am familiar with how much better things can be when you take a deep breath and hit delete, and also know how hard that is. So phone a friend, Tay Tay, and hack away. Personally, I might have cut anything about how hot she was for Matty Healy, much of which willfully ignores why he gave people the Ick4.
He seems gross, and I don’t even mean physically5. “But Daddy I Love Him” comes off as complaining about fans negging on that pairing, as if she’s only okay with them obsessing over her every move when they’re doing it on her terms6 (code words, easter eggs, 43 different versions of an album), which unfortunately is not how fame works. These are things I’m sure I would also struggle with as a celebrity, and I appreciate Taylor’s frankness because it’s food for thought, but also… at times, it might be better left to the group chat?
Now, I have heard Part 2 is stronger than Part 1, but even if I wake up in a month and decide Tortured Poets is my favorite, I maintain that Taylor needs like two years off AT LEAST to refresh things and find some new collaborators. Which brings me to my point: With whom should she work? One of the most surprising tracks on TTPD is “Florida!!!,” and not just because of the exuberance of those three exclamation points. Swift is joined on it by Florence Welch, who contributes substantially enough that it honestly feels like a Florence and the Machine joint that Taylor just showed up to for a cocktail. I tend to be the most interested in those — for example, folklore’s “Exile” with Bon Iver is one of my favorites, a marvelous twining of their DNA. Conversely, I thought Post Malone was underused on TTPD’s opening track, and there is insufficient Haim on “No Body, No Crime.” Hell, people wanted so much more of Lana del Rey on “Snow on the Beach” from Midnights that they re-recorded it. So I think it’d be cool if Taylor continued to diversify not just WHO she works with but HOW she works with them. Maybe slightly less Jack Antonoff for a while, and more Ice Spice surprises. Or, say…
Beyoncé and Harry Styles: Not together. Wait, what am I thinking, absolutely together. Separately, it’s still embarrassingly obvious to suggest; he is her ex with the fanbase whose rabidity most matches hers7, and Beyoncé is freaking Beyoncé. I don’t know how well I think Tay and Bey’s voices would mesh — Taylor is neither a belter nor a balladeer— but the idea of the two of them doing a country song together, preferably something upbeat, is fun to contemplate. Throw in Harry, and you have a threesome that would, I think, put at least one-third of Twitter (or whatever) into an immediate coma.
The Indigo Girls. The best part of the Eras movie for me was the acoustic set, because it’s the least sweetened-sounding — ditto that whole folklore doc where she performs the album in a cabin during the pandemic. I like Taylor when it’s her and her guitar (or piano, but you feel me), and all her rough edges; Emily and Amy would blend so nicely with this. Of course, I’m sure this would set a million tiny fires among people who would see it as proof of every Gaylor theory that’s ever been written… so why not double down and throw Ani DiFranco in the mix. LET CHAOS REIGN.
H.E.R. Speaking of ladies and their guitars! And H.E.R. has a way with great suits, which I think would be a welcome avenue for Taylor to explore. At the very least, she needs some badass leather pants and moto boots.
Haim. I’d love to see Taylor go in with all the women who opened for her on tour (Madi Diaz, Gracie Abrams, Phoebe Bridgers, Gayle, Paramore, etc). But, even with the existence of “No Body, No Crime” already, I think she and the three Haim sisters could rock out on a song together where they ALL get to sing. Having said that…
The Chicks. The aforementioned tune reminds me so much of “Goodbye Earl,” in terms of the storytelling and the lack of apology for disposing of a total douchebag. Imagine if Taylor and Natalie Maines put their heads together. BOATS WOULD EXPLODE. Maybe Reba can get involved. Nobody blows up a boat like she does.
Sza. She has this great, gauzy, dreamy quality to her sound that I think would work pretty well with what Taylor’s musically attracted to right now. This is a serious suggestion! Come to think of it, Sza ALSO wrote a song about killing a jerk. We could round up all these people and more and release an album called Female Rage. Or, to dig up a now-ancient meme that never gets old, Vagenda of Manocide.
Kesha. If ANYONE deserves to be featured on Vagenda of Manocide, it’s this woman.
Mumford and Sons. The antidote to manocide! The mantidote! I’m missing some of the peppier, toe-tappier Taylor Swift, and I think a jam session with Marcus’s crew could remedy that.
Pitbull. Perhaps Taylor’s next vibe is, “I’m on a yacht with Your Older Uncle Who Keeps Trying To Party With Your College Friends.” We simply don’t know. I hope it isn’t, but would I be ENTERTAINED? Yes.
Lil Nas X. HEAR ME OUT. Taylor loves very elaborate videos with dramatic imagery; Lil Nas X did one where he worked a stripper pole before giving a lap dance to the devil. Perhaps we could get them to pair up for a Reputation vault track. All that snake imagery! Let the games begin.
Bruce Springsteen. Okay, I don’t actually think this is a brilliant idea, musically. But remember when Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett bonded? I enjoy the idea of Taylor and Bruce being inter-generational besties — but this may be because I just saw Bruce in concert and it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, and I want to make sure The Youngs understand before he hangs it up.
Jennifer Lopez. HAH. Sorry. I put this in here to make myself laugh. But now that we’re thinking about it, I really, really want This Is Me… Now (Taylor’s Version). With a bonus track or five, obviously. “Interlude with a Vampire” could be about Marc Anthony, and just IMAGINE the assonance and consonance Taylor could muster with the word “Affleck.”
Paris Hilton. First, Taylor could tear up a remix of “Stars are Blind.” But if she truly also still loathes Kim Kardashian, as the cursory intel about one at least one of these song titles suggests8, then releasing a smash hit with Paris — arguably the O.G. face of Famous For Being Famous — would be a very amusing move.
Weird Al Yankovic. Just kidding. OR AM I. Imagine a bunch of very pretentious writers in a variety of hats bumping into each other as they attempt to live in “The Tortured Poet Apartment.” What a video.
Olivia Rodrigo. It would take a miracle… but I think this is also the dream.
I could do this all day. Maren Morris! Mickey Guyton! Celine Dion! Brittany Howard (formerly of the Alabama Shakes)! Elle King! The remaining member of Milli Vanilli! A cover of Nena’s “99 Luftballons”! The overarching note being: I love the combination of stretching and reshaping that happens when two artists try to meet each other in the middle, and I also think Taylor could stand to flip this thing on its ear for a minute and back away from being so beholden to her own confessionals. An album of creative partnerships would be a built-in vacation, a sonic refresh, and potentially the most welcome release.
— Heather
This Time Last Year….
Last Call
—
had a great Met Gala explainer in this week’s Back Row! While we’re talking about the Met Gala, it’s coming up in a few short weeks. Don’t forget to become a paid subscriber to join our Met Gala chat!— You may have seen that Delta Burke gave a very moving interview about how much she struggled on Designing Women, mostly with her weight — and to the point that she used crystal meth to kill her appetite. Us Weekly managed to reduce this to the following clickbait headline: Designing Women’s Delta Burke Used Meth to Lose Weight: I Looked Like a ‘Goddess’. The story contextualizes the quote more, but that wording makes me nuts. It skates past the crux of what she was talking about, willfully ignoring how miserable she was; you have to imagine these days that people are seeing headlines and NOT bothering to click for context, so to me it’s pretty irresponsible. Ugh. Also, poor Delta. I feel like she ought to pop up on, like, Loot, or something kicky like that, should she so desire. Someplace she’d be welcomed, as she is. — H
— Quick Instagram Algorithm Purchase Updates: I promised I’d let you know how I liked the Aerosoles I purchased after Instagram told me to do so. Good news: I REALLY like them! They’re very comfy. I might order this version, too. Also: I’ve been joking to my fiancé about the “structural integrity” of our dog’s poop a lot lately — don’t worry, it’s fine! — and now the algo is REALLY worried about me and keeps trying to sell me shady-looking powder supplements that are meant to, like, clear 15 pounds of waste from my bowels in 12 hours. Talk about holding onto your butt. — J
— The Hollywood Reporter is DEEP into their 2024 Emmy Emmy Nomination predictions! (The number of qualifications on this piece makes me feel like THR must get insane emails from angry readers who have deranged takes on methodology.) The nominations aren’t even announced until July 17th! — J
I literally just looked this up over the weekend. They are. I guess I thought Spielberg made them up??? I don’t know. Leave me alone.
You know what else really holds up? Jaws, which I should write about this summer while it feels the most thematic.
The Star Wars prequels and sequels bear this out, too. Yoda should always be a puppet. —H
My theory also is that he enjoys all this, and would rather be infamous anyway. “You’d choose infamy over being into me” also sounds like a (bad) Taylor lyric.
Not that she needs to write a song saying explicitly this, but even though she eviscerates him later, tripling down on how horny she was for him… I would not have wanted anyone to know that!
She also has an unhealthy relationship with criticism, telling Amazon Music that society puts creators “through hell. We watch what they create, then we judge it. We love to watch artists in pain, often to the point where I think sometimes as a society we provoke that pain and we just watch what happens.” Pal, that’s not it. Critical thinking isn’t haterade and it’s not wanting to watch you suffer. And not for nothing, but if you are cool with publicly critiquing your exes, then you can’t turn around and say critics are just evil sadists. SOAPBOX TRIGGERED.
Maybe she should do an album with all her exes. Jake Gyllenhaal, John Mayer, YOU’RE UP.
“thanK you, aIMee,” which employs a caps trick she and Apple Music also used before the release date to get fans to spell out clues. It’s a diss track of sorts.
I love Jurrasic Park! Really liked the most recent one that came out as well I think a couple of years ago. Also the Jurrasic Park theme is nerdily enough my favorite movie theme John Williams does.
Additionally, Jaws does hold up! We go see it usually every summer in the theater when it drops for a weekend. Do a deep dive!
My little brother was OBSESSED with dinosaurs when Jurassic Park came out, and we were also, conveniently, trying to potty train him (I say "we" but I was 5, so I wasn't much help here). My mom bought a J.P. T-rex that had a bite that came out of it's side that we bribed brother with to go on the potty for a whole week. He immediately did it and asked what the next week's dino would be. Obviously, nothing, but he was dumb. (We got him to ditch his pacifier by telling him we left them on vacation...which we didn't take with us and told him we left them at home. He is 33 and still not the sharpest.)