Jurassic Parkathon - The Lost World: Jurassic Park

We’re past the first one, it’s only downhill from here… Welcome to the Jurassic Parkathon

With the first Jurassic Park film being a major success, a sequel was inevitable, right? Apparently not. See, the original book never had a sequel and any development on a film sequel ended up being dependant on a book sequel being written. And it eventually was, and the film largely went its own route anyway.

Spielberg is back in the directing chair for this one, which would be his last Jurassic Park film, and the movie was at least financially successful, making over $600m on its $73m budget.

After the events of the last movie, the Park has shut down permanently which means John Hammond’s company, InGen is searching for another way to recuperate their investment. One idea is to exploit site B, Isla Sorna (the original took place on Isla Nublar) but John Hammond has been blocking it until a kid gets ‘injured’ by baby dinosaurs on Isla Sorna (yeah, that kid should be dead but Jurassic Park films won’t kill children so ‘injured’ it is) so Hammond’s kicked out.

So, who’s the best person Hammond could think of to protect this island of dinosaurs. How about the one guy who hated dinosaurs from the offset in the first movie? Yeah, they call upon Jeff Goldblum playing Ian Malcolm by playing Jeff Goldblum, except less invested. He was literally yawning in the first shot of him.

Anyway, Malcolm refuses but it’s revealed his girlfriend Sarah (Julianne Moore) is already on the island so Malcolm goes to rescue her, with a team of dead men and morons. They find her rather f*cking instantly but as they prepare to leave, InGen sends its team, lead by Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite) and Hammond’s nephew Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard) for some reason, to exploit the island.

And with all this going on, they have to contend with Malcolm’s daughter, Kelly (Vanessa Lee Chester) having snuck on board their trailer and the idiocy of saboteur Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn).

The movie contains a lot of the positives from the first, the special effects remain good it’s well shot and occasionally they get some of the wonder of it all too. With some exceptions, such as the opening, it’s well directed and there are some cool dinosaur moments. Now onto the negative…

So, you remember how most of the characters were at least somewhat interesting and likeable in the first movie. Well, you can forget about that here, most of the characters are either extremely stupid or exceptionally dull. Jeff Goldblum just sneaks out of the bracket by being Jeff Goldblum and Roland Tembo also gives us a memorable enough performance.

Vince Vaughn’s character is dreadful and I’d lump in Sarah with him. Every time he takes action in this movie he gets people killed! First he frees a bunch of dinosaurs captured by the humans, making them run amuck and kill people. He and Sarah take a baby T-Rex back to the trailer (because they’re f*cking morons) which leads to a T-Rex attack that results in someone being killed and endangers everyone even after.

Kelly is… she’s definitely something. She was telling Jeff Goldblum to ground her/send her to her room in the opening. This is the worst written piece of dialogue in the movie, it could’ve gone on that list from the Catwoman review and it has plenty of competition in this one. She kicks a Raptor with her gymnastic skills, this movie is stupid!

                                                                           

There are also some major inconsistencies from this film to the last. First of which being Ian saying 3 people died in the first film, when it was 5. The second being Ian having only 1 child, despite saying he had 3 in the last one, but the speed of the T-Rex kinda trumps all of those. He was keeping up with a jeep in the last film, this time he can’t keep up with a running crowd. And this one had much more free reign.

OK, we get a half-decent scene with the Raptors near the end and despite that basically being a climax needed to be followed by a scene where the T-Rex attacks a human population. You can tell this was a last-minute adjustment because not only are half the main cast gone, but there are blatant plot holes (when did they capture the baby T-Rex? Why was it brought ahead? How did the T-Rex kill everyone on the boat and somehow get back into its only partially opened container? What happened to the Pterodactyls we saw as they were flying back?) it’s awesome to look at but makes not a lick of sense.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park is a major step down from the original. It still carries some of the magic but the plot and characters are dreadful, saved only by a couple of memorable performances. The climax feels tacked on to what already is a really long movie.

Rating 50/100