The definition of insanity (Or: why some movies are better off as childhood memories)

Rating: 4/10 (27 June 2015)

So, tonight I've watched The Lost World: Jurassic Park. I've previously watched this movie when I was a child, with little to no critical sense, and I remember loving it. Words cannot describe how disappointed I was after rewatching it. When compared to the first Jurassic Park, this movie is a like bad joke. And even without comparison basis (which is almost impossible, given that the first Jurassic Park is amazing and you can't just take it out of your head while watching the sequel), watching The Lost World is just painful. But the worst thing is, at first, it looks promising. Hey, we have Ian Malcolm, John Hammond, Lex and Tim! Remember all these characters you loved from the first movie? So, guess what? Out of the four, three will disappear after the opening sequence on Hammond's mansion and the one who won't will become our protagonist. "Well, that's promising", the viewer thinks. "Dr. Malcolm was one of the best characters on the first movie. That can't be bad!". Guess what, it was. Here, Malcolm doesn't have a third of the charisma he had on the first movie, and the rest of the characters are just plain dull. They're not deep, funny or likable at all. While watching the movie, you're completely apathetic to the people in danger. The only character you don't want to die is Malcolm, and that's because you knew him from the previous movie, because otherwise, he'd be as uninteresting as the rest of the characters. The screenplay, the story itself, the cast and the CGI are way worst than they were on the first film. And all the good stuff we got from it was brought by nostalgia: Water rippling when the T-Rex approaches, kids viewing the dinosaur's eye by a window, the Jurassic Park gates, John Williams' theme... just cheap attempts to buy the viewers by remembering them of little things they loved from the first movie. You know, I remember a video game line that claimed that "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again". If that's true, the crew of "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" was not 100% insane while working on this picture. Because, yes, they did some of the same stuff, but this time, it didn't worked.