Much more cluttered, far less enjoyable dinosaur island romp loosely trying expand on the first but also head in fresh directions - it just ends up blunt and uninteresting.

Rating: 5/10 (12 September 2011)

Author Edwin Page has American director Quentin Tarantino quoted as saying, upon the 1997 release of Jackie Brown - his third film, that after being asked how he would go about "topping" his preceding release Pulp Fiction, Tarantino replied that he didn't think he would, and thus tried "deliberatley" to go "underneath" his 1994 crime film masterwork; to try and undercut what was a large-and-in-charge genre piece with something a little subtler and a little more underplayed but both equally as substantial and enthralling. It's too bad Spielberg's Jurassic Park sequel came out as early on in the calender year of 1997 as it did, since a similar train of thought needs to be applied to it; the film, a mouthful in itself entitled The Lost World: Jurassic Park, wanting to go bigger and better than that of its 1993 blockbuster counterpart with larger clumps of characters; more monsters and a heavy later reliance on off-the-wall content which isn't even set on dystopian islands as much as it comes across as the director patting himself on the back for being able to pay homage to Godzilla.
Returning from the first film is Jeff Goldblum's doctor of mathematics Ian Malcolm, a man now riding subways to meet with the entrepreneur of the last film's titular Jurassic Park, John Hammond (Attenborough), at his stately home home rather than travelling with said gentleman on helicopters to touch down on tropical paradises rich with the latest scientific breakthroughs. Times are tough for Malcolm, his whistle blowing on what happened in the first film has people ignominiously confront or stare at him, whilst his funding from certain institutes has been cut due to these ill received tales. The company predominantly behind Hammond's enterprise, InGen, appear to be taking over; their grey suits and blunt tones replacing that of the kindly elderly man act Hammond fronts for the organisation, as we observe him worn and somewhat frail.
The reason for Malcolm's summoning lies with the fact a second site of dinosaurs and such is becoming a nuisance, a second site verbally established as this locale less secure than that of the first film's and much more dangerous; a place Hammond desires Malcolm to venture toward so as to lay claim to it prior to InGen's newfound fondness to exploit. He is only convinced upon discovering girlfriend Sarah Harding, played by Julianne Moore, has already gone there by herself. A scene in a large warehouse full of technology and equipment is meant to help quell fears of these characters not being able to deal with the dinosaur threat, a threat put across during the film's very first scene in which a child wonders from her rich, holidaying family and is mauled by some of the smaller beasties the result of this second site – that sense of the yet unseen larger ones probably capable of a lost worse prominent.
Malcolm is stuck with an infant of his own, that of Kelly (Lee Chester), whom came about as the result of his Lothario nature he established himself to possess in the first film. He has a rift with Kelly - like the Alan Grant character and his problem with children in the first film, there is a brief alluding to how they cannot quite connect with one another, and we are lead into wondering if what later transpires within their collative quest will help quell that. We are correct to, but it isn't evident enough throughout the film to actually amount to anything special, and certainly isn't enough in the way of character substance to carry the picture. Goldblum's character is the audience's beacon of recognition once everyone is on the island. Around him are nobodies in the form of his underexposed daughter and two nothing supporting acts in photographer Nick (Vaughn) and weapons expert Eddie (Schiff). Goldblum, a veteran of the first film in the mould of what we are, provides warnings and reiterations toward the supporting acts-plus their sense of being awestruck upon first seeing the prehistorical creatures. These are humorous and self reflective of how easily we were once caught up in the first film and its respective bringing to life of these creatures prior to being caught out by the terror of it all.
The film is a mostly underwhelming experience, an exercise in second unit direction that does not carry the wonder of the first nor the sense of craft at work which was wholly evident during the first film. Not long after InGen's own team have arrived with pomp and circumstance does the film wane; Eddie's justification that he doesn't want to shoot a dinosaur threatening one of his own team out of the fact it's protecting its young in stark contrast to InGen's ravaging of certain dinosaur hordes for their own prerogatives. One set piece sees Spielberg manage to riff on the first film too much in one go to keep the film feeling distanced enough from its 1993 cousin, a set piece in which the mud and the rain and the dark act as backdrops to a hapless character trying to tie a tow chord around a tree as a truck hovers agonisingly over the side of a cliff – all this whilst hostile variants of the dinosaurs located therein loom in the area. Where it wants to go broader and better, it just comes off as slack and goofy; a film lacking the rawness and wonder of the first and just ending up confused and sporadic in ways that are, frankly, quite dull.