Review of The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) by Kuehnau — 27 Jul 2019

During this week at work, I decided to listen to the Jurassic Park audio book. I very much enjoyed the experience, but was also annoyed at how different the book was from the movie. Because of that, I decided to revisit this legenadry franchise that was a very prominent part of my childhood. After watching and reviewing the first film, I decided to continue my adventure with The Lost World. This one has some interesting history, as Michael Crichton never intended to write another book, but after discovering they were going to make a second film, rushed to begin work on the next book.

Anyways, this movie was a massive let down. I recall enjoying this film as a child when it first came out, but after watching this film again decades later, it's pretty easy to see why this film wasn't very good.

Most of the characters are dull and uninspired, I didn't feel like I cared about them or what happened to them. Further, while Jurassic Park should be about dinosaurs first and foremost, this film tends to focus on the poachers and ecological issues more so than the dinosaurs themselves. Talking about dinosaurs, it just doesn't feel like there's enough variety, we see a small handful of them, but the major focus is on the t-rex and it's family. The story really focuses just on the t-rex's baby itself. There are scenes that simply last far too long for their own good. The one that stands out the most is the cliff scene where our protagonists are facing a life and death situation, this drags on FOREVER and I found myself finally saying, "We get it! Move on!" and fastforwarding through the scene.

There's plenty of spots like this in the film and it makes it really boring.