Excellent follow-up

Rating: Null/10 (12 October 2001)

All in all, it was fun ... (minor spoilers ahead)...
When we were anticipating the release of JP1, there were a couple of things going on that almost guaranteed it would be successful... - we just wanted to see dinosaurs alive, and no film had really made a realistic vision of this (Godzilla movies just don't cut it) - when the movie got going, Spielberg did it right, by first showing the gentle giants shaking the ground and moving in herds as though we were at the zoo; we were indeed at an amusement park, and it was wonderful (and that musical score was perfect, carrying our emotion) - the first introduction of the T.Rex was movie-making genius. All of a sudden we were thrust headlong into an unexpected and absolutely terrific, relentless onslaught of abject "will this ever end?" terror; the fairy tale amusement park ride became a life and death struggle against a pure killing machine, punctuated by our watching a lawyer get eaten right before our very eyes (it was so terrible we actually felt sorry for the lawyer...um...kind of...)
OK, so now that we'd seen dinosaurs, pretty ones and mean-as-hell ones, how could they give us JP2? How could they go beyond the initial awe of seeing them, and how could they create new ways to terrorize us now that we know we weren't going to see "Dino and Barney"?
Well, with few hitches, they did exactly that.
Granted, the subplot with "the man and the woman" was stupid, in my opinion, and totally unnecessary. In fact, she was irritating.
The inclusion of a daughter of a different race than the father was interesting, especially as it came with absolutely no explanation, showing that plenty of living had occurred between JP1 and JP2. Life is like that, sometimes, though.
The development of the theory that T.Rexes cared for their young was splendid and capitalized on the popularity of the T.Rex as a character. The scenes demonstrating and developing this were superb.
The terror scenes were indeed terrific, as only that "run or you'll get eaten" terror must be.
JP2 --> JP1 is not quite the same as The Empire Strikes Back --> Star Wars, but it was a fun ride in itself.