These days people don't even bother to disguise the fact that they're just making the sequel for the money

Rating: 3/10 (4 November 2000)

I can understand if they wanted to make another movie about dinosaurs, but why all those tedious links to Jurassic Park? Why BOTHER resurrecting four of the old characters - the two kids, I note, make a three-minute appearance, cash their cheques, then vanish without a trace - just to let us know that this film takes place in the same universe as the previous one? It's not we were the slightest bit curious at the end of "Jurassic Park" what would happen next to any of the old characters. It's not even as if they're worth meeting a second time. -Well, perhaps I could have lived through another outing with Sam Neill's palaeontologist, but nooo, instead I have to put up with Jeff Goldblum's unconvincing, insufferable, sunglass-wearing mathematician. (Why him, Lord? Why him?) And the title - "The Lost World" - adds insult to injury, for it suggests a far better dinosaur movie that might have been, based on Arthur Conan Doyle's book. Trust me: if they had made a dinosaur movie out of THAT "Lost World" rather than Crichton's, it may still have been bad, but it couldn't possibly have been THIS bad. (P.S.: Crichton had no right to pinch Conan Doyle's title.)
Even allowing for Crichton and Spielberg their initial mistake the first half hour was poorly conceived. Talk about leaden exposition. Every character is given several paragraphs' worth of pointless, computer-generated back story. Kelly - Dr. Ian Malcolm's daughter - feels as if Ian is neglecting his duties as a father, while Ian fools himself into believing that the important thing is to grant Kelly as much freedom as possible; similarly, in his relationship with Sarah, blah, blah, blah. I DON'T CARE. This is a story about the struggle between man and dinosaur. As soon as the razor-toothed beasties begin to stomp around all of these soap opera hand-me-downs will be forgotten anyway; during that ENDLESS first act they simply clog the film's arteries. -When will people learn? In a Human vs. Dinosaur story you reveal the humans' feelings towards one AFTER the dinosaurs strike; you let the external struggle illuminate the characters' inner lives AS THE PLOT PROGRESSES. -I mean, there's nothing aesthetically shameful about external, physical struggles. You don't need to import any of this human relationship stuff to make your film respectable. But if you MUST do so, INTEGRATE IT! ... I can't say I was very impressed with the dinosaur bits, either. Too many people on the island, too much random stupidity and movement ... and, as you will have heard, the action somehow shifts to San Francisco for the finale. (San Francisco! ...and it really does just SHIFT: it's not as if anything new happens. In mid-dramatic-sentence, they pack up everything, including a tyrannosaurus, cart it all several thousand kilometres, then pick up where they left off.) I must admit that the greater use of computer-generated creature footage, regrettable per se, was in keeping with the film's aesthetic: computer footage is cold and sterile, but I guess Spielberg wanted his dinosaurs to be no more than soulless killing machines.