The sense of humor saves it.

Rating: 7/10 (26 June 2003)

My first consideration when judging The Lost World: Jurassic Park (JP2) is that however flawed the movie is, its dinosaur sequences are really fun, and they delivered exactly what I wanted when I saw the movie on the big screen.

When a movie shows me a guy riding a motorcycle underneath a brontosaur, and depicts the dinosaur so realistically that the stunt looks completely believable, I'm willing to tolerate a jokey script and direction.
The talking points on this movie seem to be that the script is bad, and Spielberg's direction of it isn't very good.
I'm actually not surprised that the script isn't good, because it's based (however loosely and lazily) on Crichton's not-very-good novel The Lost World, a follow-up to Jurassic Park. Sure, the book is entertaining, with sequences that should have been kept in the movie (such as velociraptors attacking people trapped in the high hide, and an encounter with chameleon dinosaurs which another comment mentioned already); but overall its story is a lame rehash, its characters are dull and/or unappealing and its action sequences become increasingly ridiculous.
Therefore, even when I first saw JP2 in May 1997 I wasn't surprised by its lame plot, dull characters or ridiculous action sequences. What did surprise me was that scriptwriter Koepp managed to somewhat redeem the ludicrously contrived story by absolutely smothering it in wisecracks: there's hardly a scene in JP2 that doesn't have a humorous line or two, with most of the best ones going to the naturally flip Goldblum (my favorite is "Increase your rate of climb!", during the trailer-cliffhanger sequence).
While the actors in the first JP treated it more or less seriously (led by Sam Neil, who played his role absolutely straight), the cast of JP2 treats it like the lightweight special-effects thriller that it is: even the solid supporting actors like Schiff and Postlethwaite play the movie straight only half the time, then play it for laughs the other half. It's a classic case of "if you can't make the sequel better, make it funnier."
Many people seem to resent that JP2 is such a big send-up of itself, and it's arguably so flawed that not even its sense of humor can save it. Well, I actually don't mind the movie's shoddiness or its lack of depth because it was obviously never intended as a "serious" movie anyway.

It's easy for me to hate an unintentionally stupid movie, because a stupid movie unaware of its own stupidity is usually boring; but JP2 is so intentionally, CHEERFULLY stupid (and aware of its stupidity) that I can't easily hate it.
Consider the memorable sequence in which several characters run through tall grass and dinosaurs begin devouring them one by one: after watching the sequence, I could imagine Koepp smiling as he wrote it and Spielberg smiling as he directed it, because there is such a guilty pleasure to be derived from watching people being careless and thoughtless in a situation that demands care and thought.
One character even warns the others to not enter the grass, then joins them anyway and plunges ahead: scenes of dinosaurs stalking, attacking and eating people are more fun when the people seem to be thinking, "The dinosaurs won't eat me! They'll eat the others, but not me!"
Despite all its joking, the script is actually an efficient continuation of the first movie's theme that the best possible intentions can produce the worst possible result. One character is determined to prevent the exploitation of the dinosaurs, but his actions (inadvertently?) cause the death of nearly everyone on the island; not enough people have acknowledged the irony that he was sent by Hammond, who created the dinosaurs and is ultimately responsible for all the deaths in both JP movies. The best line in JP2 is Malcolm's reply to Hammond's assertion that he's not making the same mistakes: "No, no, you're making all new ones!"
The script also manages to explore the spectrum of human attitudes toward nature: Postlethwaite gives the best performance of the movie as (yet another) old-fashioned big-game hunter who respects the power of the dinosaurs yet can only express his appreciation by wanting to kill a tyrannosaur for sport. Stormare's character is also memorable because his contempt for the little compsognathus dinosaurs has unfortunate consequences; Hammond's nephew coldly regards the dinosaurs as his products and has no respect for the power of nature they represent (he is not evil merely because he is a capitalist, as some people have argued).
So I don't think the JP2 script is bad, or that Spielberg's JP2 direction is poor.
JP2 is rated last among all the movies that Spielberg has directed, but I would rather watch it a tenth time than watch Hook again, or Empire of the Sun, or any of the other weak links in the Spielberg canon.

A previous comment complained that Spielberg overdirected the tyrannosaur attack on the trailers: I actually agree, but I believe the exaggeration was intentional. Spielberg has already proven himself a master of cliffhanger action in the first JP and the Indiana Jones movies; he didn't have to overdirect the JP2 sequence, but he probably did so with humorous intentions.
Spielberg is that rare kind of director who isn't afraid to poke fun at himself, and the cliffhanger sequence with the trailers is so humorously and deliberately overstated that it can only be a Spielberg self-parody. He's a director who does what he intends, and I don't believe he overdirected the sequence merely because he was bored or careless.
The other complaint, that Spielberg's use of overlapping dialogue (with several characters talking together) indicated that he was bored with the movie, is answered by the fact that overlapping dialogue is a Spielberg trademark which appears in many of his movies, good or bad.

JP2 is an entertaining and worthy sequel, and neither the script nor the direction is as bad as some people have argued.
Rating: 7 (It's worth seeing at least once.)