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JURASSIC PARK Starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sir Richard Attenborough. Directed by Steven Spielberg.
Bidding for a family-friendly PG-13 rating, Spielberg has toned down some of the bloodier bites in Michael Crichton's best-selling novel, but he's still working with a surefire plot. Call it Jaws-Plus: A demented theme-park operator (Attenborough) turns into a Dr. Frankenstein, genetically engineering dinosaurs that eventually run deliriously amok. The animatronic beasts, designed by special-effects whiz Stan Winston and including a 9,000-pound tyrannosaur, all functioned on cue, but nature itself threatened the production. Hurricane Iniki roared through the Hawaiian island of Kauai after three weeks of location filming, forcing the cast to spend 14 hours huddled in a hotel ballroom. Goldblum (playing a skeptical scientist who runs afoul of the T. rex) says, ''It was sobering, but we rode it out. It brought us closer together as a company.'' In fact, he and costar Dern became so close that a romance developed. Back on Universal's locked-tight soundstages, filming actually finished two weeks ahead of schedule. But the computer-effects team at Industrial Light & Magic (the same folks who executed Terminator 2's quicksilver T-1000) still had to finish about 50 shots of rampaging dinos. ''It's a key advance in terms of the modeling,'' says producer Kathleen Kennedy. ''T2 took a human being and animated something coming out of that form. We're creating something from scratch-living, breathing animals-and that catapults things into a dimension no one's ever done before.'' Apparently confident of the results, Spielberg decided to oversee postproduction long-distance from Poland, where he has been filming Schindler's List, monitoring Jurassic's special effects by satellite hookup to ILM and commuting to Paris on occasion to screen updated cuts. That way, not only could he capture the Polish winter on film, but he'll also be able to enter two movies in next year's Oscar derby. (June 11) Buzz: Jurassic's status as the summer's biggest movie is a foregone conclusion. The only question now is, How big? A reasonable guess is $200 million, although Jurassic's stomp-and-chomp violence may keep little kids and cautious parents away.
LAST ACTION HERO Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austin O'Brien, Mercedes Ruehl, Bridgette Wilson. Directed by John McTiernan.
With the movie's price tag reportedly soaring to more than $80 million, Columbia Pictures chairman Mark Canton seems to have bet the farm on this fantasy about a boy (O'Brien) whose magic movie ticket launches him into the world of his favorite on-screen hero (Schwarzenegger)-a gimmick that allows Player-esque cameos by Sharon Stone, Chevy Chase, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Tori Spelling, and Mrs. Ah-nuld, Maria Shriver. But early screenings have not been entirely promising. The film was sent back for reshoots last month after test audiences complained that-get this-there wasn't enough action. Last Action Hero wasn't always The Movie That Ate Columbia's Development Budget: Its origins two years ago were more modest-a spec script from the neophyte writing team of Zak Penn and Adam Leff that Canton bought for $150,000. As the production mushroomed into an extravaganza, Canton yanked the two 23-year-olds from the project. ''We wanted to get Arnold,'' says Penn, who with Leff wrote the script around the Schwarzenegger archetype, ''and to do that the studio needed a big-name writer.'' Columbia first hired Shane Black (Lethal Weapon) for a rewrite, and then-at the star's insistence-William Goldman for a reported $1 million polish. ''We gladly swallowed the pill,'' says Penn. Leff and Penn ended up with an ''original story by'' credit. ''The movie,'' says Leff, ''became bigger than our egos.'' (June 18) Buzz: Word of mouth has been nothing short of poisonous, which says more about the number of movie-biz insiders who are rooting for Arnold to belly flop than about the film itself. Still, if this Action Hero doesn't mow down at least $100 million, Canton may have to update his resume.
