A good follow up

Rating: 9/10 (20 August 2001)

A couple months ago I would have trashed this movie. When it came out I had high hopes for it, as before seeing it I had read Crichton's excellent novel and could only imagine how great a big screen adaptation would be. Obviously, The Lost World is nothing like the novel it's 'based' on, and this angered me for a while. After seeing the recently released Jurassic Park 3, however, I finally am able to separate the JP movies and books into two very different spins on a similar story. Having accepted that, I can now look at the Lost World once more as it's own movie and look at how it fits into the series. I think it fits in very well.
I won't bother detailing the story, everyone already knows it. Jeff Goldblum does a great job stepping back into his Ian Malcom character, the supporting characters especially Vince Vaughan are great too. The dinosaurs, which is what everyone wants to see, are similarily well done. There's nothing really new from the first movie save for some stegos and pachycepholasaurs (sp?) but that doesn't matter as they all look as good if not better then they did in the first one.
Now, as for the San Diego ending, at first I hated it and thought it screwed up the movie, now I don't. The scene is quite interesting in it's Godzilla kind of way, and the idea of the whole world knowing about the dino islands is good as it allows for more sequel ideas, which I certainly want to see. 4 out of 5 from me, and JP3 does it even better.