Film review by Kevin Patterson
The Lost World (PG-13, 1997) Directed by Stephen Spielberg. Screenplay by David Koepp. Based on the novel by Michael Crichton. Starring Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore.
Let's start with the good news: The Lost World is a decent, entertaining summer thriller. The special effects team does a wonderful job in bringing these dinosaurs to life, and there is plenty of fast-paced action and suspense to make it fun to watch. Jeff Goldblum returns as Dr. Ian Malcolm, the mathematician and chaos theorist from Jurassic Park, delivering his lines with a nervous deadpan that would make Fox "Spooky" Mulder of X-Files fame proud. It has all the necessary ingredients for its status as the summer blockbuster of the year.
Now for the bad news. First of all, the plot is for the most part a re-hash of the first film: Humans arrive on island populated by genetically resurrected dinosaurs. Humans manage to piss off said dinosaurs. The main characters are attacked by a Tyrannosaurus Rex while in an automobile and one of them gets eaten, then they escape and run around in the jungle for a while before they reach a power station which they use to call for help. The only difference here is that one T. Rex manages to find its way to San Diego, which, surprise surprise, results in more chases, more destruction, and more people being eaten. It also sinks even further into action-movie clich*s-did anyone really think that Dr. Malcolm's estranged daughter wasn't going to end up on the trip to the island somehow?
Perhaps in an attempt to differentiate itself from Jurassic Park, this one seems to be trying to find an uneasy compromise between the kind-of-scary-but-family-friendly nature of the first movie (after all, these are dinosaurs) and sheer cold-blooded terror. It doesn't always work: a scene in which a boy wakes up in the middle of the night and tells his incredulous parents that "there's a dinosaur in our back yard" kind of ceases to be cute and endearing when it ends with the family's dog (and probably the family themselves) being gobbled up. It also tries to push a message about conservation, which I guess is admirable, but I wonder how many environmentalists would appreciate the script's conflation of Greenpeace activists with Earth First! eco-terrorists.
This is not to take anything away from Spielberg, who clearly still knows how to direct a tight, suspenseful thriller with dazzling special effects and stunts. I just don't think this is one of his better films, nor is it even that important an addition to the Jurassic Park legacy. Like Independence Day, whose box-office records it has now broken, it seems like just another summer sensation that will probably be forgotten in a year or two.
Grade: B-
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