What was wrong with the story in the novel (among other things)???

Rating: 3/10 (8 December 2000)

I am a huge fan of Michael Crichton, Steven Spielberg, Jeff Goldblum and John Williams. But this piece of rubbish they tried to pass off as a viable sequel just does NOT cut the mustard! First of all, the original plot in the novel was intriguing enough, albeit a tad dry for a screen adaptation, what with ALL the discussions of extinction, animal behavior and what not. Even still, Crichton managed to write a captivating story with enough action to make the NOVEL a worthy sequel. However, how could he have signed his name to this? The movie starts out alright, with the story staying relatively close to the book. But the discrepancies start to show very early, having taken four of the book's characters and condensing them into two - Eddie Carr (which is an amalgam of the book's Eddie and one of the main characters, Doc Thorne) and Kelly (who is a mix of the two children in the book, neither of which are Malcolm's kids).
Granted, some of the scenes from the novel do make a small but passing appearance in the movie - however, some scenes come from the original novel "Jurassic Park" (such as the opening scene with the girl being attacked by the compys and the scene during one of the T-Rex chases where they hide under a waterfall). Were Spielberg, et al., really hurting for decent scenes? Because some of this comes off as mere filler, rather than important plot development (like the first film). At least they managed to get the trailer attack scene in. Jeff Goldblum isn't as effective in this movie as he was in the first - primarily because without his glasses, he has a rather neanderthal look to him. He needs a shave! (At least he got a grooming for those iMac commercials.) Now, I am one of John William's biggest fans, loving his film music back to Star Wars and Indiana Jones. The score from Jurassic Park was phenomenal and I get chills just thinking about it. So what made him settle for the rather uninspiring original music for this one? The sparse references to themes from the first film were SO sparse that when they were put to use, it was almost too obvious. In my opinion, he probably would have done better to continue more with the themes presented from the original score. Even with the completely unbelievable storyline (a T-Rex in San Diego??? Come on!), uninspired acting, and unoriginal music (the new theme Williams introduces tries too much to be like the first!), I still look forward to Jurassic Park 3.... ....However, I hope that the producers listen to the critics on this one and try to make it as good as the first (or at least, better than this one).