Needs a couple of rewatching to be really entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (13 February 2016)

I had read Michael Chrichton's The Lost World before I went to see Spielberg's sequel to his wonderful Jurassic Park, and I prayed the director would deviate significantly from that shallow, uninspired mess that simply regurgitates elements from the first, magnificently written novel. He did, but after seeing the film I wish he hadn't, because Spielberg's and David Koepp's story feels even more forced and illogical than the novel. The script is poor and incoherent, and the characters are clichéd and uninteresting (save for Ian Malcolm and Roland Tembo, played by the great Pete Postlethwaite). I saw The Lost World and Men in Black back to back in the theatre, and I found the latter immensely more entertaining.
Not everything's bad, though. Stan Winston's team surpassed themselves again, and created the most realistic dinosaurs in any of the four Jurassic movies produced so far. John Williams composed an excellent score for the film (again, probably the best in the series), and Janusz Kaminsky's cinematography is of top quality, as always (that shot of the slowly cracking window pane - just brilliant). There are memorable moments (e.g. the attacking raptors in the tall grass) and memorable quips (mainly from Jeff Goldblum, the real saving grace for the movie), but Spielberg probably took on the task of directing the sequel only because he wanted to capture his childhood dream on film (a T. Rex looking in the window of a child's room), and it shows. No wonder he had become disenchanted with the movie by the time he finished it.
Surprisingly, The Lost World has grown on me somewhat over the years, because it proved to be highly rewatchable. I still find it the least satisfying Jurassic flick, but Goldblum's charisma, that window pane, the shot of approaching raptors in the grass, or the tribal drums during the double T. Rex attack on Eddie stop me dead in my tracks every time.