Review of The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) by Fgh R — 25 Jul 2017

This much meh'd about sequel to Jurassic Park was always gonna have an uphill struggle, the first one was a groundbreaking masterpiece that had become the biggest thing on the planet after all, but it really does fail in comparison in a big way.

You really feel Spielberg's heart wasn't in it and you'd be right, he's even stated how univested he was in the project from the get go (He did the gruelling and powerful Amistad the same year to blow the Jurassic cobwebs off, astonishingly, he hadn't even gone into pre-production with when he finished this movie, and yet still had that movie out the same year) it really shows in fact, theres a slack.

flat feeling to the movie and the plot holes are so massive and glaring it's almost absurd, like the mian point of contetion of the film that is the truly weird scene with the crashed boat, how exactly did the t-rex get out, eat everyone on the ship, and end up trapped back in that container? what the hell happened in this scene? of course if you do some detective work online, you'll find that in the script a bunch of Velociraptors were meant to have stowed away on board and eaten the crew, though this scene was scripted it was never shot but strangely they never took out or modified the aftermath of the incident, leaving the movie with a scene that's truly too odd and unexplained to ignore as just "one of those movie plot hole things".

More than this are so many other strange inconsistencies and moments that if you really look at them are quite bizarre, like the exploding Humvee that leaps 400 feet in the air and lands on a tree two characters are in, leaving them to have to jump out in time, which comes off as a pale and slightly strained imitation of the "car in the tree" set piece of the first movie.

There are also clearly missing effects shots in the climax (where does the t-rex go when the hanger doors are closing on the boat? and why do the stegosaurus's vanish from the scene when they are attacking Julianne Moore? you dont even see them leaving) plus you get the annoyingly precocious 90's kid character who's a total fucking nuisance you want to punch and who pleasingly dissapear's in the last act.

The most glaring example of how little effort anyone really gave this film is Jeff Goldbulm, gone is the cheeky, womanising rock and roll mathematician who spiced up the first film, he just doesn't seem to be the Ian Malcom from before, rather he's just another twitchy Jeff Goldblum character (he could literally be the same character from Independence Day) all he does in the movie is be fairly useless and make cheesily laboured declarative statements ("Mommy's very angry".

"Now you're John Hammond". "We should have stayed in the car". This is most of the dialogue he has, sometimes in between he seems to be just thrown into a scene and told to say whatever rambling unscripted stuff he can to fill the moment) The villain's death is really odd too, yeah he's a cold, business headed dickhole but did he really deserve the jolly John Williams scored, seemingly triumphant, nasty end he receives? did we really need that final third too? the whole t-rex in San Diego scene is filed with sloppy silliness and cringe inducing, winking moments, and the thing feels like an afterthought to the movie, even Moore and Goldblum's characters seem different, like the ending was re-shot.

I really could go on, this is one tackyily put together, big budget blockbuster, that falls to pieces the more you watch it. But The Lost World, although most certainly cut price quality Spielberg, is still, after all, a lot of fun.

It's a sometimes really thrilling, "people stuck on a dinosaur filled island b-movie" the effects are awesome, it's full of great set pieces, it's exciting, jumpy and scary. In short, lower tier Spielberg but sometimes top quality summer blockbuster film-making.