Could this be one of the worst movies ever?

Rating: 1/10 (4 February 2003)

I saw LOST WORLD on TV and couldn't believe what a mess this movie was. The film is like a chicken with its head cut-off, running in every direction. LOST WORLD simply doesn't know what it wants to be. I didn't care much for JURASSIC PARK (the whole concept of dinosaurs at a PARK is silly!) but at least it had a semblance of a storyline. No such thing in LOST WORLD. It's scatter-shot and at times weirdly incomprehensible.
There are two things that stood out after watching this "film."
The first thing is that Spielberg was obviously obsessed with the idea of having the CGI fx to appear as seamless as possible. It's very difficult to create special effects were the CGI dinos can be seen sharing screen time with other objects. If you watch JP, most of the CGI created dinosaurs are unobstructed by any object in the foreground. Well, not in LW. Practically every scene where there's a dinosaur, there are people or a jeep or trees or building or gas station moving in front of the CGI creatures. It's to a point where it becomes ridiculous. It creates a very monotonous and repetitious look and feel to the special effect. The effects (and dinosaurs) suddenly become bland. They fade TOO much in the background.
The other technique Spielberg was obsessed with in LW was having several people talking at the same time. Almost every scene when/where there's acting, there are two or three conversations going on at the same time. It's REALLY irritating! And by doing this, by muddling the dialogue in such a way, it's obvious Spielberg was BORED with the characters, the screenplay, the ENTIRE project.
Except for those two obsessive points, the direction is amazingly lackadaisical. The terrible screenplay is all over the map. There are no interesting characters. Julianne Moore is totally miscast. And her acting abilities are terrible in LW. The sets look fake. The idea of the mother dinosaur looking for her baby in San Diego is like GORGO. The in-joke of showing Asians screaming and running away from the rampaging Tyrannosaurus is unfunny.
But the worst part of this terrible movie is the action. The scene when the Winnebago/laboratory hangs over the cliff is probably the MOST over-directed scene in movie history. It is stretched to point of ridiculousness. And when the little girl jumps on the pipes and does these gymnastic moves and kicks the raptor through a window, my jaw was on the floor. What were they thinking?!?! This scene is the dumbest scene since, well, GYMKATA, which is one of the best "it's so bad it's good" films ever made. It's funny to think that a Spielberg movie has something in common with GYMKATA. And the action scenes with Julianne Moore, watching her tumbling out of windows and falling on the ground are so unconvincing and badly directed that it's unintentionally hilarious. When they run to the helicopter, there's NO suspense or relief. We're just watching them run to the helicopter in a cheap looking movie set.
But the piece de resistance is the whole rampaging through San Diego moment, which works like a Road Runner cartoon: the T-Rex is looking for her baby, which is held by Jeff and Julianne and who were on the ship when the T-Rex made its appearance after the boat crashed at the docks (another excessively directed scene). Well the angry dinosaur causes a lot of death & destruction as it follows the two all over San Diego, who, eventually, end up going back to the ship anyway. What was the point of this whole moment? Just the novelty of having a dinosaur running around a big city?
THE LOST WORLD is REALLY bad.