Retro Film Review: The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

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(Edited)

(source:tmdb.org)

In 1993 Steven Spielberg's Jurasic Park became one of the highest grossing films of all times and thus convinced all Hollywood sceptics that CGI technology represented the future of film industry. By making a huge pile of money Jurassic Park secured its own future in the form of sequel. That sequel, titled The Lost World, was directed by Steven Spielberg in 1997 and held the record for the biggest weekend opening in the history of American box-office.

Just like the previous film, The Lost World is using material form Michael Crichton's novel. The plot starts four years after the events of Jurassic Park - the theme park featuring dinosaurs genetically engineered from fossilised DNA has been closed after the tragic accident, but one of the survivors, Dr. Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum) gets summoned by theme park's owner John Hammond (played by Richard Attenborrough). Eccentric billionaire has become born-again environmentalist and wants to protect "Site B" - the island where dinosaurs were bred and left to live free of human interference. Their well-being is threatened by greedy investors and their champion, Hammond's nephew Peter Ludlow (played by Arlis Howard) who wants to remove Hammond from the corporate leadership. In order to protect "Site B" Hammond has arranged scientific expedition to record dinosaurs in their natural environment. Malcolm agrees to go only after learning that his palaeontologist girlfriend Dr. Sarah Harding (played by Julianne Moore) is already on the island. Once there, he gets another nasty surprise in form of his daughter Kelly (played by Vanessa Lee Carter) sneaking her way into expedition. Three of them soon have much more things to worry about after another expedition - in service of Ludlow - lands on island and starts hunting dinosaurs in order to bring them to theme park in San Diego. Malcolm and his people decide to thwart their efforts, but in the process, both groups of humans arouse attention of the more carnivorous segments of island's fauna and must use all their skill and ingenuity simply to survive.

With Jurassic Park Spielberg had single thing in mind - to show dinosaurs as living, breathing and believable creatures. He achieved that aim admirably and impressed hundreds of millions of people who had such experience for the first time in their lives. With The Lost World he couldn't have expected to have same impact and the sequel was bound to be defined as "more of the same". The special effects technology and power of CGI computer have improved over four years and the budgets were higher, making the "more" visible to anyone comparing those films. Some dinosaurs and some scenes from the original novel that had been removed from the original film are here; there is bigger diversity among dinosaurs, their number is bigger, the settings are more natural and, last but not least, the body count among humans is bigger. But, just as in many similar examples in Hollywood history, "bigger" usually doesn't mean better. Considering that Jurassic Park, stripped of the CGI-rendered dinosaurs' novelty factor, didn't provide particularly memorable piece of cinema, chances for sequel to be good film were quite small.

The biggest problem of The Lost World is in David Koepp's script being nothing more than collection of excuses for the scenes of dinosaur rampage and not bothering to create even illusion of some plot and characters. Unlike Jurassic Park that had intriguing, foreboding and believable beginning, The Lost World starts with too many convenient coincidences to allow suspension of disbelief. Many of those coincidences are there to provide repeat of the formula used in Jurassic Park or improve on it - character of Dr. Sarah Harding is here simply to replace Dr. Ellie Sattler; Malcolm gets daughter only to provide film with adorable child; the child happens to be black only to please the black segment of Spielberg's audience. While the characters in Jurassic Park behaved like idiots, idiocy in this film is brought to another level. Heroes in this film thwart hunters' plans by letting dangerous animals loose in the middle of their camp and don't expect to see any serious injury, death or indictment for attempted murder. Even more idiotic is decision to steal baby tyrannosaurus rex from broken nest despite the knowledge of the young animal's parents protective instincts and destructive abilities; such course of action results in much mayhem, human child being in danger and one pointless death.

With the exception of big game hunter, played by Pete Posthlethwaite, few characters can create any sympathy among audience; on too many occasions the audience would actually root for tyrannosaurs, velociraptors and other prehistoric beasts in their clashes with human characters. Alas, in displaying dinosaurs' murderous abilities Spielberg is less consistent than in Jurassic Park; dreaded velociraptors are here reduced to pathetic creatures that could easily be outsmarted and outfought by few puny and unarmed humans. The worst part of the film happens at the end – in an attempt to torpedo commercial chances of rival studio's Godzilla, Spielberg brings tyrannosaur to San Diego only to have standard scenes of prehistoric monster rampaging through modern American metropolis. In order to have these scenes and chief human villain to receive his comeuppance, Spielberg ignores Titanic-size plot holes. This collection of insults to viewer's intelligence is the main reason why The Lost World represents probably the worst film in Steven Spielberg's career. Jurassic Park, despite all of its flaws, would be remembered as the important ground-breaking film; this film is going to sink into well-deserved oblivion.

RATING: 2/10 (-)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on January 28th 2004)

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