What did you expect, BETTER than Jurassic Park?

Rating: 10/10 (30 January 2001)

Okay fine, it's not as great as Jurassic Park, but The Lost World still came out as a quality dinosaur film. Keep in mind that the special effects and computer graphics are still virtually unparalleled in this kind of film, and I think that they did a good job presenting the story. Luckily, Stephen Spielberg agreed to direct a sequel to the tremendously successful original, because even though I think that potential disaster did not necessarily lie with the choice of directors, if he did not want to do it the whole movie could have been screwed up. I'm not saying that Spielberg is the only guy who could have directed this film successfully - I'm sure plenty of other directors could have done it - but Spielberg has such an undying fascination and love for dinosaurs, and I think that it shows in these films. If you listen to him talk about how he got into the whole Jurassic Park scenario and why he chose to do the films and why he likes dinosaurs so much, the guy sounds like a little kid because he gets so excited, and on top of that, he's a spectacular director. Those, not to mention a huge budget, good actors, and a quality special effects team, are the ingredients of a good dinosaur movie.
On the screen, however, it's Jeff Goldblum who steals the whole show, just like he did in Jurassic Park. He is back as the ingenious and highly entertaining Ian Malcolm, the "chaotician" who is around to point out the dangers in harnessing live dinosaurs in a park, no matter how isolated. Probably one of the only things that The Lost World doesn't do as well as Jurassic Park is surprise the audience. (spoilers?) When you watch The Lost World for the first time, you KNOW that there are going to be dinosaur attacks and people getting killed, etc. In short, you basically know within the first 20 minutes of the movie that Malcolm will be exactly right about his predictions of what will happen on the "new" island. So in this case, the fun part of the movie is seeing what they came up with to put into the sequel to the great Jurassic Park.
I think that most of the credit should probably go to Michael Crichton for the quality novel that he wrote as a sequel to Jurassic Park, because this was by far the most important part of this movie. We already know that they can make the dinosaurs real, now the challenge is to make a second movie that is as engaging as the first, while using mostly the same technology. And obviously, this requires a seriously impressive story. Luckily, they left enough of a loophole in Jurassic Park so that a whole second island could be snuck in  the island on which all of the dinosaurs were hatched and raised for the early part of their lives BEFORE being transported to Jurassic Park.
The conflicting interests about what to do with the dinosaurs provides for the majority of the story here. You have foolish bounty hunters who want a freakin' Tyrannosaur ALIVE, you have ignorant scientists trying to study the dinosaurs like everyday predators, you have the great Vince Vaughn (shut up, he rocks) there as a `plan B' in case anything gets out of hand, and of course, you have Ian Malcolm there telling everyone that they are wrong and should leave as soon as possible, which everyone in the audience knows, but it's okay that we all already know that.
What you get with all of this is a film that does not live up to the stunning success of its predecessor, but that is still able to stand easily on its own. Stephen Spielberg provided just as much skill in his direction as in the original, and the acting all around, even from the unknown actors, was very good. All of this combines with Michael Crichton's excellent story, just the right amount of comic relief, and plenty of gory action to make another superior dinosaur film.