Deserves extinction

Rating: 4/10 (30 July 2007)

Spielberg's worst movie until Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, this sequel of the 1993 classic bears little resemblance to Crichton's novel - although, to be frank, The Lost World wasn't a very good book either.
Scientists Malcolm (Goldblum) and Sarah (Julianne Moore) explore Isla Sorna, populated by dinosaurs created by Ingen, meeting the mercenaries led by greedy Ludlow (Arliss Howard). Good guys and bad guys team up to escape when T-Rex and Raptors start eating everybody. The less said about the ignoble Godzilla-like epilogue in San Diego, the better.
Goldblum reprises the character of Malcolm but without the dry wit of the first film. It's typical of sequels: a funny character gets promoted to protagonist and suddenly he isn't funny anymore, because now he has to drive the plot and endure the obligatory arc (think Jack Sparrow in last Pirates movies).
I've always been a fan of beautiful, talented redhead Julianne Moore, but here she is wooden and miscast, her worst performance that I recall. Postlethwaite's hunter is the best character but disappears before the last act, which is dramatically unsatisfying. Now, if the last act had disappeared altogether, *that* would have been a satisfaction.
Character development is a failure. In Jurassic Park even secondary figures like Muldoon , Arnold and Gennaro had some effective bits of characterization. Here, a bunch of nobodies run around screaming like in some abysmal straight-to-video horror flick. Were we supposed to care about the bearded paleontologist? About Tembo's hunting pal? Sorry, who were they? I must have missed the scenes which actually gave them a personality.
Another issue are the dinosaurs themselves. In the first film they were awe-inspiring; here they have become just more CGI beasties, and occasionally even look fake (see the Compys attacking Stormare).
The score is also a disappointment. Williams' work for Jurassic Park was magic. Here, every time you expect the beautiful familiar theme to rise, it falters and stutters - a good metaphor for the movie as a whole.
Spielberg being who he is, there are a few neat visuals and set-pieces (the trailer hanging from the cliff, the Raptors in the high grass), but not enough to redeem this misbegotten sequel.
4,5/10