Subject: REVIEW: THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK (1997)

From: [email-masked] (Ram Samudrala)
Date: 29 May 1997 21:20:28 GMT

THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK
                       A film review by Ram Samudrala
                        Copyright 1997 Ram Samudrala

/The Lost World: Jurassic Park/ is essentially a rehash of the
original.  Man messes with nature.  Things go wrong.  People get
eaten.  The major difference is in the last part which is quite
sophomoric and not at all fitting of Steven Spielberg.

It is four years after the horrific disaster that happened at Jurassic
Park.  Again, we meet the good doctor, John Hammond (Richard
Attenborough), no longer at the head of his company but still pulling
a few strings behind the back of his son, Peter (Arliss Howard).  The
original base camp of operations set up by Hammond on Isla Sorna, Site
B, still exists and there are living colonies of dinosaurs there.
Hammond, who has gone from capitalist to naturalist, wants to observe
the creatures in their natural habitat and put to rest years of
speculation about the lives of the great animals.

Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is asked to come on board the team
sent to scout the island where the dinosaurs live.  He refuses until
he learns that his girlfriend, paleontologist Dr. Sarah Harding
(Julianne Moore) is already alone on the island.  He then becomes part
of a rescue mission including himself, photographer Nick Van Owen
(Vince Vaughn), equipment specialist Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff), and
his daughter Kelly Curtis (Vanessa Lee Chester) who stowed away in the
back of the van.

Besides the animals who would like to have humans for din-din,
Malcolm's team has to cope with Peter Hammond and Roland Tembo (Pete
Postlethwaite).  Tembo's goal is to kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex to prove
man is the greatest hunter.  Peter wants to capture the animals and
bring them to the mainland to create "Jurassic Park, San Diego". Bad
idea.

Spielberg and company, clearly realising they had a winning formula
the last time around, don't deviate very much from it.  By the time
the Tyrannosaurus Rex gets to San Diego, I couldn't help but thinking
I had just seen /Jurassic Park/ again.

What is missing in this movie compared to the original is the
intellectual aspect.  There's no talk of chaos, no background about
how the animals were bred and raised, no delving into evolution about
how the animals could overcome their lysine deficiency, and no "this
is Unix, I know this stuff!"  Viewers are simply expected to have this
knowledge, and this means more time for bone crunching effects.  As a
result, we have a movie that is darker and gorier than the original.

The movie is entertaining and has some interesting messages about
cruelty to animals and leaving nature alone to do as it will.  See it
for the matinee price but don't spend the big bucks on this one.

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