THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK
A film review by Michael R. Thompson
Copyright 1997 Michael R. Thompson
MPAA Rating:PG-13 For More Info: http://www.lost-world.com Personal Rating: 3 out out 10
SHORT REVIEW
The Lost World is the sequel to Jurassic Park, and let me start by saying that it is not as good a film as the original. A return is made to a different island populated by dinosaurs brought back to life through modern science, and a big melee ensues as 20th century man starts to interact with the Dinos. The thing is that in the original movie, although it didn't have terrific acting, the action sequences with the dinosaurs were tense and smart, the special effects were incredible and novel, and there was a fairly coherent story line. In The Lost World the special effects are the only solidly positive thing I can point out about the movie, but they really aren't worth the price of a ticket, even with THX. This film might still be very entertaining/scary for kids, but I doubt you would enjoy it if you are an adult.
SLIGHTLY LONGER REVIEW (Contains specific descriptions of
scenes in the film, might be spoiler,
if you have not seen the film or trailers)
I left Jurassic Park knowing there would be a sequel, and already hoping that it would be like Aliens was to Alien, a surprising improvement. Unfortunately, The Lost World is not an improvement on, or even comparable to Jurassic Park. I was particularly surprised by this because I read the novel The Lost World awhile ago, and was pleasantly surprised by it (You might read it; it bears little resemblance to the movie), and felt it would make a very passable sequel. The reason that The Lost World is not very entertaining, in my opinion, is that (a) the story is convoluted and gratuitous (did a T-Rex really need to make it to shore in the US), and (b) the action sequences were not up to what I usually look for from Spielberg.
The following discussion doesn't give away any of the movie's plot, but is probably more interesting to someone who has seen the film, and recalls the specific action sequences. Many people say that you need to suspend your belief when you walk into a movie like The Lost World, and I do up to a point. I accept that I'm going to see movie where dinosaurs come back to life, but not where people get to defy the Laws of Physics for the sake of big pyrotechnics. Let me give an example of the types of action sequences I find good and bad. In Jurassic Park there was a scene where a Velociraptor chased a kid into a kitchen, and the child gets the Velociraptor to run into a reflection of itself in a stainless steel door, knocking the raptor out. I could believe this sequence, and it was extremely tense. In The Lost World, in a similar scenario a velociraptor breaks into an equipment shed, and then waits patiently while Jeff Golblum's daughter performs a parallel bar routine before kicking the raptor through the wall. It was the longest setup for a joke that I have seen in a while. The trailer over the cliff scene in The Lost World was similarly implausible, if someone had gotten a piece of their clothing caught on the trailer as it slid over the cliff after they climbed up, and then got pulled halfway to oblivion, I would have liked the scene a lot better than seeing three people hanging on one rope slide through the center of the trailer. Anyways, I have ranted enough, suffice it to say that I expected the kind of action I've seen in Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, but got the kind of scenes that seem to be proliferating in movies like Mission Impossible, The Rock, etc.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews