I don't know if it was "revolutionary" but it was a great movie. I enjoyed the book more but the movie was still great for its own reasons, plus there were enough differences between the two that the movie really can be considered its own entity. Well, now that I think of it, I suppose the movie did have a very profound effect on the use of CGI in motion pictures, bringing it more into the main stream and showing off what CGI can really do.
P.S. That the image of the apatosaur standing up on its hind legs will be forever engrained in my mind.