Lost World: Jurassic Park, The (1997)
(A longer review; I was fired up)
Seen with Byron for $3 on 21 August 1997 at the Cineplex Odeon Worldwide
Something has survived, and it still stinks.
A review of this movie would be pretty much similar to those for the first (Jurassic Park), except that this is even worse. To quote Bart Simpson, "it's crappy crap crap crap."
Four years after the Lost World theme park was destroyed by genetically revived dinosaurs running amok, ruining a big investment, and killing a few people, it turns out "something has survived." Actually, it turns out dinosaurs were also bred on nearby on a nearby, also off Costa Rica. Sort of the alpha version of the Jurassic Park, which was destroyed many many opening weekends ago. The movie opens briskly by putting a little girl in jeopardy and then cuts away without showing what has happened to her. A bad sign.
The principal character now is Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), who winds up back on the island when John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) convinces Ian's girlfriend Dr. Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) to document the dinosaurs in actions. She is a paleontologist on the go. Along with two other photographers, they are going to show what the island is like without man's interference. It turns out the bad folks at Ingen want to resurrect the theme park idea, where tourists would happily pay to see T-Rex--in San Diego.
When the corporate bad guys show up, the movie takes the first of many tragic turns into laughability. It's a labyrinth of conflicting incohesive theme. The environmentalists versus the evil corporate slant. There are lots of ridiculous plots in here: Malcolm returning to do relay races with dinosaurs, now with stowaway black daughter in tow (putting a child at risk for "dramatic effect" is a longstanding cinema faux pas); Sarah's insisting on setting the broken leg of a baby T-Rex, not believing its Ma and Pa will hunt it down and actually be dangerous (this is when Byron exclaimed that she should be the first to get eaten); a T-Rex is holed up in the boat's cargo bay, so how does it kill people at the helm (leaving just a hand on the wheel) without any destruction on the ship?
A slew of stereotypes ensue as well. The bad guys invariably have British accents, like Pete Postlewaite as Roland Tembo, whose dream is to hunt a buck T-Rex. Time for a new dream, bub. There's the wide-eyed black man running from the T-Rex in San Diego that evokes the "manservant" from jungle movies yelling "da Mummy is on da loose!" There's the mambo-listening hispanic inexplicably named "Carter." There are the panicky Asian tourists, with cameras, fleeing the T-Rex. I guess they only expect Godzilla in Tokyo.
It's insulting to expect us to suspend all disbelife and care too. If you want to create a tense thriller with great special effects and lifelike dinosaurs, do that, but don't throw machismo, blended families and their traumas, conservation politics, and impossible feats of agility at us in a noisy mishmash. If grown men are plucked out of cars and torn asunder, can we really believe a 12-year-old girl can conquer an overgrown lizard with her gymnastics routine?
The only worthwhile portion of the movie is the overlong scene where Sarah's life is literally hinging on the shattering of a windowpane. Of course it steals from other masters, but it works, until it goes on far longer than it should.
The Lost World represents two hours plus that I can never reclaim, with an idiotic unendurable moralizing finale. Luckily, with Wondee Siam around the corner, we able to bolt the theatre and have something to look forward to.
Copyright (c) 1997 Seth J. Bookey, New York, NY 10021
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
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