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

From: [email-masked] (Terri Buchman)
Date: 29 May 1997 21:24:06 GMT

THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK
                       A film review by Terri Buchman
                        Copyright 1997 Terri Buchman

Geez, ya ever go to the movies with your kids and you just know that you
ain't seeing the same flick they are?  That was the case with THE LOST
WORLD.  I saw a fairly slow and poorly written film that had few thrills
and uneven pacing.  I thought it was a C+, at best.  My kids saw a great
movie with huge dinosaurs and great special effects and enough spills and
chills to give them nightmares for a couple of days.  They gave it an A and
are telling all their friends about it.  So, with respect to both
viewpoints, a split review.

Parents: Geez Louise why do I always get stuck next to the guy who has to
explain every damn scene to his apparently brain-dead girlfriend? How the
hell hard can it be?  Scientist escaped from Dinosaur Island the last time
and doesn't want to go back and play 'hide the salami' with the T-Rexes any
more.  Wise old former Capitalist waives money, scientific curiosity and
the threat of having the guy's girlfriend eaten by giant dinos and --
poof-- scientist goes back to the island.  Nasty bad old capitalist idiots
decide to also go to the island and "meddle where man was not meant to go."
(This is bad.  They are going to get eaten. We know this 'cuz we saw the
last movie and nasty people like lawyers and greedy capitalists and
gun-totting morons with slack-jaws always become lunch.  Law of the jungle
baby.  I mean geez, what are they going to do, let the dinos eat the kids
or the heroes?  No way.  That doesn't leave anyone for the next sequel.)
Everybody screws around with scientific stuff that isn't very sturdy, wind
up pissing off the dinosaurs and then just barely escape with their lives.
Extremely stupid capitalists decide to bring dinos back to 'civilization'
(well, California, but it counts in the movie.) Nobody in this movie ever
saw KING KONG and doesn't know what any pre-schoolers knows; never bring
giant killer animals into the city.  The animals don't like the city, they
can't get good take-out in the suburbs and they get pissed off and start
stomping on cars.  Everything turns out allright though because the dinos
get back to nature, the bad and greedy capitalists are wiped out by
liability suits and the scientists get to go home and watch TV.  That's
about it.

Ah, I've seen better.  The movie is really, really slow.  I liked the
beginning, wherein a little kid is almost eaten by tiny dinosaurs. Hey, I'm
a parent and there are times when you take your children to the movies with
the expectation that something in the damn movie will scare them.  If dinos
only eat adults then how the hell are the kids supposed to get scared.
"Hey, sit up and be good or I'll send you to Jurassic Park where you'll get
eaten by giant T-Rexes with bad breath and humungo teeth."  "Yeah right Ma,
dinos only eat grown-ups.  You're the only one who'd be in trouble." At
least now we know that tiny dinosaurs do have a taste for small children.
It's a start.

I was bored with the first hour of LOST WORLD.  It was slow, filled with
dull people with dull jobs and unintelligible dialogue.  I liked Jeff
Goldblum, but mostly because he's Jeff Goldblum and he has an interesting
and unique way of delivering a line.  (He has a sort of hushed and
breathless delivery filled with accents on off words that I find slightly
disorienting and enjoyable.) The woman who played his girlfriend wasn't
interesting enough to remember though she did scream well.  The hunky guy
who was a photographer for at least part of the movie before he
metaphorphisized into a Rambo clone was nice to look at.  (What was that
all about?  Was he really a photographer or just one of your standard
movie-issue hunky Rambo guys who only pretend to be a photographer?  I have
no idea.)

The guy who was in FARGO was good, although he was actually playing the
same character.  (Though he had more dialogue in this movie than in FARGO.)
There was also an English guy playing  a hunter in the picture who was evil
because he wanted to hunt down a male T-Rex. (I am not sure why this guy
was evil.  The T-Rex wanted to hunt the English guy down and eat him, but
the T-Rex wasn't considered evil, he was just doing his job as a devoted
husband and father.  But the hunter guy was evil.  Really really evil.  I
mean, they even cast an English guy as the hunter, that's how evil he was.)
And there was the cute kid who played Jeff Goldblum's daughter.  She was,
ahm, cute and read her lines well and screamed well.  Unfortunately she
also had to act in a scene that called for her to do a really ludicrous bit
of gymnastic daring-do that
was a truly dumb moment of film-making.  Poor kid.

The best part of the picture was when a T-Rex got loose in San Diego.  I
felt bad for the dino because I've been in San Diego and it's really hard
to get around that city as a tourist.  The dino was angry and tired and
scared that his kid was hanging out with a bad element.  When he wound up
in the suburbs, stuck without a map and unable to see the street signs
because of the poor lighting and all, well, my heart bled for him.
Fortunately the T-Rex was able to rescue his kid and beat a path back home
before his old lady found out and kicked him out of the nest.  Phewh!  I'm
really glad he made it.

Kids:  Wow!  What a great movie!  The dinosaurs were like ten, no twenty,
no fifty feet tall.  They were so cool.  And they, like, ate people and
like dripped blood all over everything and it was so coo-ooo-l.   I loved
that movie.  And, like, they only ate grown-ups which was really good
because the kids didn't really want to hurt them but some of the adults did
so that was good.

The guy who was in ID4 was in this only he was like he was when he was in
the first JURASSIC PARK and not like he was when he was like saving the
world and stuff.  (He was cool when he was saving the world and got to fly
in a spaceship and hang out with Will Smith and stuff only he wasn't doing
that in this movie cuz he was different.)  This movie was just like
JURASSIC PARK only it was different. In JURASSIC PARK the dinosaurs were
pretty good but in this movie they are even better.  And they, like, drip
blood when they eat people, you know.  I don't think they dripped blood
before, but my friend has the tape so I could check and find out.  The
T-Rex didn't eat anybody like a lawyer in this movie, but he was still
like, eating people and stuff, so it was the same thing, only different.

Anyway, see this movie.  It was GREAT! It was really scary and funny and
good and it had giant dinosaurs kicking cars around and stuff and I really
liked it.  My Mom didn't like it, but she's old and so it wasn't really even
a movie for her, so what difference does she make anyway.  See it!

Terrib

Sigh!  Maybe I am getting old.