Magic's in short supply for JP2

Rating: 4/10 (29 December 2006)

I enjoyed Jurassic Park immensely back in 1993. In fact I enjoyed it so much I went back to see it a second time. A film must be something special if it prompts you to revisit it more than once at a cinema. JP may have been thinly plotted, but it was an exhilarating, thrilling adventure. First class entertainment. One of Spielberg's best.
So when a sequel was announced in 1997, I was first in line to see it on opening night. I had my bucket of popcorn. My nerves were all a jangle. I was all set for a truly fun evening. And a funny thing happened. How thoroughly underwhelmed I was by the whole thing.
The Lost World was perfectly watchable but not once did it stir feelings in me the way the original did. All the wonder, awe and joyous surges I was expecting to feel just didn't surface this time around.
I started to get a sinking feeling about the film the moment Richard Attenborough mentions the existence of Site B, another island where the dinosaurs were bred before moved into the park.
I mean how contrived can you get?! Building a complex on an adjoining island for the express purpose of breeding dinosaurs and then shipping them over to another island. After watching the original, I was under the assumption the dinosaurs were bred in the park. We even saw scenes with dinosaurs hatching from eggs.
It's all been set up to construct a new scenario on a whole new island without fences or barriers. That's what passes for plot. In this case, the hero of the piece is Jeff Goldblum's character, chaotician Dr Ian Malcolm.
Last time, after he was injured by Hammond's creations, he was pretty much sidelined for the remainder of the film. And here he's been allowed to take centre stage.
Hammond lost control of InGen, the company that created Jurassic Park, after a family stumbled upon Site B and their daughter was injured by a bunch of "Compys", tiny scavengers that look cute but aren't anything of the sort. Hammond wants to learn the situation on Site B, and dispatches a team to do it, comprising Ian, his girlfriend, paleontologist Dr Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), Hammond's incentive to get Ian there, as well as an animal rights activist and a photographer.
InGen send their own team, made up of Hammond's nephew and a game hunter (Pete Postlethwaite) to bring back a few specimens to San Diego, and pick up where Hammond left off. Of course, the dinosaurs prove to be more than they can handle, and both teams must band together to survive.
Plot-wise that's about it. The special effects are just as good as you'd expect. Better in some ways. All the dinosaurs are clearly defined. The T-Rexes. The Velociraptors. I can't complain there. And there are some fantastic action set-pieces. The wonderfully gripping scene when Ian and Sarah are trapped in a trailer slowly being pushed over a cliff by two T-Rexes. And the great moment with Raptors hiding in the long grass, pulling their victims under.
But there isn't anything here that JP didn't do ten times better. TLW feels like a disjointed assemblage of action scenes with no rhyme or reason. They're there just for the sake of it. The actors do what they can, but even with stellar talent present like Goldblum, Moore and Postlethwaite, its not enough to save the film. There are just too many glaring plot-holes for the film to overcome.
Being a Spielberg film, there has to be a kid present. And in this case, it's Ian's daughter, who's bizarrely Black, for some strangely never explained reason. She doesn't really add anything, and the way her character is introduced halfway through makes no sense at all.
You can sit through TLW easily enough but it never engages the way the original did. There is nothing here that burns into your memory, like the T-Rex making its first appearance in JP, or the Raptors hunting the kids in the kitchen. Those were real nerve-shredding moments.
And TLW has a frankly bizarre ending. A T-Rex is brought back to the mainland. It somehow slaughters the crew of the ship its aboard, even though its still contained. And then it gets loose in the city. Give me a break! This is not Godzilla or King Kong. But Spielberg seems to think it is.
The Lost World is a sadly lacklustre follow-up to a very enthralling beginning. The wonder and awe the original elicited is sadly lacking here. By all means, if you're a fan of the JP series give this one a try, but like Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it's a mere shadow of previous greatness.