Seriously uninspired.

Rating: 4/10 (1 March 2009)

The first Jurassic Park had an immense impact on not only the industry of special effects but also the world of paleontology. Dinosaurs had never been seen this way before. The sequel sadly fails to impress or even challenge the viewer to expect the unexpected from stories we have seen repeated in the sausage factory that Hollywood has always been in a sense a bit too many times.
Jeff Goldblum's character once said in the first film: "You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you want to sell it." It seems this is exactly what happened to the director of that first movie. Many people actually don't know what has become a harsh fact: Steven Spielberg HATES movie sequels. No kidding. The Lost World: Jurassic Park is the only sequel to a Spielberg film in existence that has actually been made by the man himself aside the Indiana Jones franchise that he made with close friend George Lucas. What's this got to do with this review? Well, let me get this straight. If a respected film-maker whose movies have freshly challenged the minds of audiences around the world for over three decades makes a sequel he doesn't give a blasted pilcher about yet wants to make that can only mean one thing: We all got punk'd!
The Lost World has it's basic idea and setting taken from a Michael Crichton novel of the same name the author wrote mainly with Spielberg in mind. The novel, in the way it's story comes to be, was much more efficient in conveying what happens in the said setting via approach we can believe could happen to us because it's confined and down-to-earth in it's way of building the tension. Only the basic idea of two teams(the other changed to a small army in the movie) and another island used for dinosaur creation were used in the film. That's it. And why just that and nothing more? Because they could. There's no point here, just excuses, excuses to rake cash on a story concept that in my humble opinion deserves better. This is something it never truly got. Not here, because Big Spiel's got a big issue with sequels. According to his words from the time, films like this are canary tricks meant for exploitation. I beg to differ. Sequels don't have to be plain products for reptile brain kids if they are made with the right things in mind. And whoever has those right things wasn't around the production of this one.
In it's essence, The Lost World: Jurassic Park is nothing but a shameless, bloated rehash of the first JP without the same smart challenge that first film gave our minds. This ones a canned version, meant for easy consumption and throwaway, something made obviously clear by the cheaply scripted King Kong knockoff ending. A product with some art slapped on it for other words. You might enjoy it but rest assured, this is not intelligent Spielberg storytelling that we once knew and in fact only appeals to the true target audience, little children who watched too much Barney. A disappointment and wasted potential on a concept that showed promise in more than special effects.