THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK
A film review by Paul-Michael Agapow
Copyright 1997 Paul-Michael Agapow
Chaos mathematician Ian Malcolm (Goldblum), having had nothing to do in "Jurassic Park", is given a second chance when his girlfriend (Moore) is dispatched to another island of dinosaurs. Going out there with the obligatory cute kid and lots of vehicles that can be wrecked by rampaging dinos, they meet up with company representatives on a rival mission. After hearing their English and South African accents, the dinosaurs eat the corporate goons and later rampage through San Diego. At that point there is no more room left on the back of the Minties wrapper the plot was written on, so the film ends.
If your brain is the size of a peanut and in your tail, have I got a movie for you!
In case you haven't heard, "The Lost World" is distinctly ordinary. "Jurassic Park" was no great shakes on the braincell scale, but at least it had some story, novel and rather wonderful special effects and some halfway decent action. (Remember the raptors hunting the children in the kitchen?) But "The Lost World" just hauls its surly carcass up onto the screen and slops out the warmed over leftovers of "Jurassic". The writing is criminally stupid and derivative. I found myself groaning aloud as I second-guessed every plot twist. (And let me assure you that i mean _every_ plot twist.) It is interesting that "The Lost World" does not bother to remind you of the previous film or explain anything again (assuming you remember JP well), but still expects you to be amazed by serving up exactly the same dish. (The cinema here had teamed it up with "Beavis and Butthead Do America" which had a certain sense: "Hehe, hehe, dinosaurs ... this is so cool.")
The lacklustre plotting of "Jurassic Park' was to some extent made up for by its SFX. Despite much touted improvements, those of "The Lost World" are only incrementally better, some of the matting being downright clumsy. Now that CGI can do anything, special effects alone are not enough to push a film. The direction and photography are reasonably accomplished, given the story problems. (One notes Spielberg's total inability to scare anyone except with in-your-face surprises and loud noises.) Conversely, the acting fails to survive the travails. Jeff Goldblum (the thinking man's Christopher Lambert) loses his luddite speeches of the first film and gets some neat one-liners, but fails to convince us that he is in anyway in jeopardy during the film. Julianne Moore's career is going straight to movie hell if she doesn't break out of bland roles like this. Her sole function seems to be to accidently endanger the rest of the party. It's difficult to care about anyone else during the film, because it's difficult to even catch their name. Only Pete Postlethwaite shows any depth as a hunter with a philosophical bent.
The film finally comes to life at the end with a T. Rex rampaging through the city. Unfortunately the cuteness of this part is diminished by the no-brain setup. (The dinosaur kills everyone on the boat, including those below deck or in the small rooms, and locks itself in the cargo hold? Right ...)
In summary, "The Lost World" is only slightly more stupid than predecessor but more lazily plotted and vastly less original and hence much less interesting. This is nowhere near the worse film you could see this year, but it is one of the least inventive. It might also be added that it is amazingly violent for the rating it got and is unsuitable as a children's movie. [*/misfire] and Friday's fish returning as Monday's fish casserole on the Sid and Nancy scale.
"The Lost World" Directed by Steven Spielberg. Based on the novel by Michael Crichton. Starring Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite, Arliss Howard, Vanessa Lee Chester, Vince Vaughn. Released 1997.
------ paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse "There is no adventure, there is no romance, there is only trouble and desire." [archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/]
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