The Lost World: Jurassic Park

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Runtime: 129 minutes

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite, Arliss Howard, Vince Vaughn

From: Universal

Before I get to talking about this movie (which I saw last night), I have to mention that today was a sad day in the acting world as three deaths were announced of actors who had passed away in the past few days: 

Peter O'Toole (I haven't seen enough of his movies but he was awesome in Lawrence of Arabia)

Tom Laughlin (I haven't seen any of the Billy Jack films but I've wanted to for years now; he was really the Seagal of his time in terms of being a martial artist who had lofty ideals and enjoyed such things as nature and not wanting to be violent but wanting to be... and also being weird; it turns out that my parents apparently have seen all those movies way back when)

Joan Fontaine (She was 96 and one of the last of “Old Hollywood” to still be alive; my mom has seen some of her movies way back when)

But now onto this review; I saw this movie in the cinema summer of '97, as I had seen the first one the summer of '93. I am pretty sure that was the only time I had seen The Lost World in full until last night. I did not remember too much from it, to be honest. I did remember it was clearly not as good as the first one.

The plot, taken from the IMDb: “Four years after the failure of Jurassic Park on Isla Nublar, John Hammond reveals to Ian Malcolm that there was another island ("Site B") on which dinosaurs were bred before being transported to Isla Nublar. Left alone since the disaster, the dinosaurs have flourished, and Hammond is anxious that the world see them in their "natural" environment before they are exploited.” There are also other people involved, including a rival company, a big game hunter... and Goldblum's character's daughter, who looks nothing like him. I suppose she was added because the first movie had kid characters, but wow was that a badly done character and I am not even talking about the now-infamous “gymnastics scene”, which is at least unintentionally hilarious.

I can't say I hated this movie or that it was bad. There still are effective scenes and there are some nicely-filmed sequences. However, that story... it's just no good and it sinks things. It has characters (especially the one played by Moore) doing the stupidest things just to advance the plot and that kind of stuff can be pretty irritating. Most of the characters aren't that interesting and they seem one-note and not fleshed out; you don't always care when they bicker and yell at each other. As I already said, the movie would have been better off without the really annoying Ian Malcolm's daughter character. It's also a mess, storytelling-wise. As for the “T-Rex rampaging through San Diego” part, it was shorter than I had remembered. At least that was cool.

It's not awful; it's just disappointing considering the original movie, the talent involved and the legendary director who you just expect more from. At least I finally got to see it after all of those years. Like I said last night, I won't be back until Christmas as I'll be out of state and I have to prepare for it before I leave.