In 1997, Steven Spielberg and team returned to give us a much anticipated sequel to one of the biggest box office hits ever with JURASSIC PARK: THE LOST WORLD. The loudest thud this one delivered was my expectations hitting the floor, I really hated it at the time and never watched it again.
Revisiting it again 18 years later, LOST WORLD is better than I remembered but still meanders so much with a hit and miss cast that it fails to excite except in fits and starts.
Scientists have descended on a second island near the original Isla Nublar, where inventor John Hammond grew the dinosaurs that he eventually transplanted to the park in the original film.
The premise really works in Michael Crichton's original novel on which the film was based, but somehow becomes hackneyed on film, feeling forced and goofy.
Jeff Goldblum is the best part of the film, returning as our favorite eccentric Ian Malcolm. Just when you get excited that he's aboard and that he is heading to the island, he gets saddled by the screenplay with his stowaway daughter and the very grating Julianne Moore as Sarah Harding, who seems to be in place solely to be in danger.
Throw in a scenery chomping Pete Postlethwaite as a mercenary leading a second team to the island with an entirely different agenda than our scientists. Much of his dialogue is unintelligible and the character never quite works.
There are a couple great moments from Spielberg and his creative team. The twenty minute sequence with a massive two part trailer being pushed off a beach side cliff by some angry T REX parents, with Goldblum and Moore inside and dangling over a crashing ocean FAR below is as good as anything Speilberg's ever done.
John WIlliams music score is terrific, bringing in familiar themes but creating an all new score, just as he did for another inferior sequel, JAWS 2.
But by the time a T Rex was brought to San Diego in some half ass modern play on King Kong, I was so checked out that all I did was roll my eyes and look at my watch.
Is it better than I remembered it being nearly two decades later, yes.
Is it really any good? No. For me, the most LOST aspect of LOST WORLD is it's screenplay.
It gets a C-.
Followed four years later in 2001 with declining returns by Jurassic Park III.
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