courtesy of Universal

Are you old enough to remember when Jurassic Park first came out? I’ll never forget seeing it for the first time. It was the summer after 10th grade, and Kelsey and Julie-Ann and I (three of the four Sisters of the Traveling Chocolate) decided to celebrate the end of finals with a trip to the movies. The theatre was packed, and between the cutting-edge special effects and the lightning-fast pace, every single person in there was on the edge of their seats. Kelsey and I were so transfixed by the film that, when we glanced over and noticed Julie-Ann wasn’t beside us, our first thought was “DINOSAURS GOT JULIE-ANN!” *

I’ve probably seen this movie at least a dozen times by now, and even with two degrees in genetics, it’s still a crazy good time. With the exception of one moment that pulls me out of the story every time.

I can get past the DNA in amber thing, as John Hammond has unlimited resources to look for samples (“Spared no expense.”)

I can get past the “we filled in the sequence with frog DNA,” even though choosing an amphibian instead of a reptile (or a bird, as the film maintains dinos turned into) is a very weird choice on all kinds of levels, except for the one that conveniently allows all the female dinos to start replicating.

I can even get past the part where they don’t have dino embryos to put the DNA into, when the chemical environment of the mother’s egg has been shown to have huge impacts on the development of the offspring.

I can’t get past this:

She can’t see us if we don’t move!

BECAUSE SHE CAN STILL SMELL YOU.

Did you see Jurassic Park when it first came out? How do you feel about it 20 years later? What other movie moments pull you out of the plot every time you see them?

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* Julie-Ann was in fact behind the row of seats. Kelsey and I maintain she was so scared, she had to hide. Julie-Ann swears she’d dropped her Smarties and had chosen the film’s climax to go looking for them.