Underrated

Rating: 8/10 (14 May 2008)

I saw this movie when I was a kid about 10 years back. I felt nostalgic, so I went to my cupboard, took out the VHS and placed in on my VCR. This movie is pretty much underrated. Since it didn't follow the novel that much and it had a bit of flat dialogue and characterization, it received 50 % positive reviews. I believe this film was better than the first in some ways. It had really good action sequences and its visual effects were ahead of its time. Even after the release of so many movies that have advanced in effects such as Transformers, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Spider-Man, King Kong (2005), Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. I still found the effects very believable. So believable that when I saw the scene with the Rex chasing the hunters and the other scene where the Rexes push the trailer off the cliff, I had a heart attack. This movie also one upped from its predecessor by placing the T-Rex in an actual city, and this was a year before Godzilla came out. In terms of characterization, I liked it that they made the genius mathematician Ian Malcolm the top character of the story. In the novel he was a key character who actually predicted that the park would fail, yet in the first movie it was more about Dr. Grant and the kids. The only thing that this movie may have failed in is just the dialogue which sounded a bit rehearsed, rushed, too quiet and used a bit too many big words and when I saw this movie I was 7 so I had a bit of trouble on trying to capture the plot. In the end this movie deserved better ratings and I will always be a fan of this epic franchise.