The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg

CAST: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn, Richard Schiff, Vanessa Lee Chester, Arliss Howard, Pete Postlethwaite, Peter Stormare, Richard Attenborough

REVIEW:

When Jurassic Park debuted in 1993, it ushered in a special effects landmark, bringing dinosaurs to the screen that looked so astonishingly real that audiences were effectively ooed and ahhed into being easily forgiving of a generic narrative and thinly-drawn characters. Alas, four years later, the “wow” factor has worn off to the point that the special effects don’t quite compensate for the limitations this time. Steven Spielberg and Industrial Light & Magic are back, but while The Lost World has its highlights, it’s missing some of the magic.

This time, years after the “incident” at the park in the first movie, the never-opened Jurassic Park has been abandoned and its menagerie of dinosaurs relocated to the nearby Isla Sorna. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) no longer wants to open a dinosaur-themed amusement park; he’s become an advocate for leaving the dinosaurs alone and letting Nature take its course, but in an attempt to get some PR on his side and prevent this “lost world” (roll credits!) from being pillaged, he’s slapped together a documentary crew including paleontologist Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), documentary photographer Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn), and field equipment expert Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff). Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), the only other returning face from the park fiasco, doesn’t want anything to do with dinosaurs after getting up close and personal last time, but winds up joining the team with the sole intention of rescuing his girlfriend Sarah, not knowing that his somewhat estranged teenage daughter Kelly (Vanessa Lee Chester) is tagging along as a stowaway. Little do they know, however, that Hammond’s nephew Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard) is also headed to the island with less benevolent intentions. He’s coming to ransack the island and round up a menagerie of dinosaurs for his own zoo in San Diego, and he’s accompanied by a team of hired mercenaries and Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite), a big game hunter who wants to bag a T-Rex.

Probably the biggest problem with The Lost World is that the novelty factor has worn off, and the filmmakers show a lack of imagination in keeping things fresh. The reasons for maneuvering Malcolm onto the island—and give a reason for having one of the original movie’s stars in the sequel—are contrived and manufactured, and giving him a girlfriend and an estranged daughter in an attempt to broaden his thin character don’t really work, mostly because they feel as perfunctory and obligatory as they are, and Jeff Goldblum/Julianne Moore and Jeff Goldblum/Vanessa Lee Chester engage in too much obviously scripted bickering. Screenwriter David Koepp, returning from the previous film, here liberally chucks most of Michael Crichton’s same-named sequel novel out the window (aside from Malcolm and Sarah, it mostly features a completely different cast of characters, with Peter Ludlow replacing Lewis Dodgson—who had a bit part in the first book and movie—as the “villain”). The dinosaurs, while still well-rendered and displayed in a more varied menagerie—there’s a big chase sequence with the mercs rounding up a bunch of dinosaurs, including a motorcycle weaving between a towering behemoth’s legs—aren’t as awe-inspiring, and the Spielbergian touch of magic and grandeur which was present in the first movie is mostly absent here, replaced by a lot of generic monster movie running and screaming and people getting chased and eaten, sometimes in unnecessarily nasty ways—like the character who gets ripped in half between two T-Rexes—and follows the beats of a combination of King Kong and a rehash of the first movie, with the characters hurtled from one chase sequence to the next (there’s also some unforgivable examples of characters doing implausibly dumb things for the sake of the plot, like when ostensible wildlife expert Sarah leaves a blood-stained shirt hanging out in the open). For sure, there’s a number of edge-of-your seat moments in the mix, especially a literal cliffhanger with a trailer hanging over a cliff and Julianne Moore trying not to break the glass under her while spiderweb fissures spread. It also features what feels like a second climax after the climax, when we finally get off the island, only to go into the 11th hour final act with a Tyrannosaurus on a rampage in San Diego that’s undeniably fun but also feels like a knock-off of both Godzilla and King Kong.

If the first movie wasn’t renowned for its great characterizations, the ensemble scurrying around here is even thinner, with the likes of Julianne Moore, Vanessa Lee Chester, and Vince Vaughn feeling like less likable and more annoying replacements for Laura Dern, Ariana Richards/Joseph Mazzello (who have cameos), and Sam Neill. Apart from the fleeting walk-ons by Richards and Mazzello, and a glorified cameo by Richard Attenborough, the only returning face is Jeff Goldblum, and Malcolm is a dubious choice for our lead. Not only are the reasons for dragging Malcolm of all people—who, as you may recall, never wanted anything to do with any of this in the first place—onto the island contrived and manufactured, but he loses a little of the snarky likability when promoted from an enjoyable supporting character to our “hero”, a role he doesn’t really feel like he fits. Of the others, Richard Schiff might as well be wearing a red shirt, while Arliss Howard, sporting a British accent, is the obligatory cliched weaselly corporate “villain” (with Peter Stormare as a secondary “villain” as a sadistic merc whose penchant for zapping small dinosaurs with a cattle prod comes back to bite him—literally), and character actor Pete Postlethwaite plays his big game hunter Roland with about as much conviction as his shallowly-written character allows.

As sequels go, The Lost World has its highlights but is a step down, and suggests that there’s either not many places to go with the premise of people running around menaced by dinosaurs, or these filmmakers lack the imagination—or interest—to devise them. In any case, it’s serviceable popcorn entertainment, but even with more dinosaurs—and more cast members for them to chew on—it doesn’t escape feeling a little “been there, done that”, both in regards to its predecessor and to other similarly-themed dinosaur/monster movies.

* * 1/2