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Jurassic Park: The Lost World
Tyrannosaurs kill the people, but the director kills the sequel
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Jurassic Park: The Lost World
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Rated PG-13
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Starring Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore
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134 minutes
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Review by Tamara Hladik
 or creatures that have been extinct for 65 million years, dinosaurs are sure hard to kill. Although the dinosaurs reified by the InGen company were thought killed in Jurassic Park, InGen head John Hammond explains to Ian Malcom (a former consultant to Hammond) that the corporation's marvels yet live, on a secret, remote island. After the dinosaur debacle at the Isla Nublar safari park, in which some people were eaten, Costa Rican officials exterminated the creatures. However, InGen's main genetics operations had been on Isla Sorna, Hammond intones, and there, unlike the park, the animals were set free to create their own ecosystem.
Hammond declares he's learned from his mistakes, and only intends that the creatures be studied. To this end he has gathered a photographer, Rick Van Owen, an equipment expert, Eddie Carr, and a paleontologist. Malcom bristles upon hearing the paleontologist is his girlfriend, Sarah Harding, and that she's already on the island. Hurriedly, Malcom makes plans to depart with Van Owen and Carr. The timing could be better -- Malcom's ex-wife just dumped their 12-year-old daughter on his doorstep, and she chafes at being left behind.
Arriving in the lost world, no one appears to have been eaten. They meet up with an unharmed Harding, who tells them they're safe because the predators only frequent the island's interior. Everything's okay. However, unpleasant surprises erupt. First, they discover a stowaway -- Malcom's daughter. Next, the phones are buggy, and they can't call for assistance (no problem, they see planes flying overhead). But not so fast -- those are InGen planes, dropping off squadrons of hunter/commando-types who begin to capture and harass the dinosaurs. Things begin to look not so idyllic...
Sure people get eaten, but all the fun's gone
First, what's good about The Lost World: the dinosaurs. With a megamillion dollar budget, they ought to be, and mostly are. The rexes are superbly horrible and simultaneously awe-evoking; the stegosaurs magical. In fact, the fabulousness of dinosauria is so well done that when dinos are hurt or menaced (even those terrible carnivores), viewers are likely to feel instant sympathy with beasts who, seconds before, might have been about to disembowel their victims.
What's bad about The Lost World? Cripes and bejeezum, just about everything else. The plot is so diluted as to be virtually nonexistant. The drama seems contrived and the action forced. Intelligent characters do nonsensical things that fly in the face of their smarts, their professions and important observations they've made about plot points. The film has so much terror and so little humor that when villians get theirs, it's horribleness instead of justice. Additionally, The Lost World is much too violent for the young audience it woos. Never in a film that targets children should children be mauled, good guys torn in two, and dogs eaten alive.
Some, of course, will be satisfied with the dino-sideshow. They won't mind that the actors, though good, never seem to really connect with one another. They won't protest that the film takes off only in the last 20 minutes, when a t-rex is brought stateside. The movie that Spielberg seemed to want to make is this one, where the rex prowls suburbia, menaces Japanese tourists, and pays homage to Gorgo. Alas, he should have.
Where are the triceratopses? Again, Spielberg gives them about two seconds of airtime. Any child knows the must-see battle is between triceratops and tyrannosaurus rex (rrrrarrrrghhh). For the paleo-cognoscenti, check out the Robert Bakker look-alike. -- Tamara
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The Lost World
The cream of English society in a primordial soup
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The Lost World
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Starring Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone
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1925 black and white, silent
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105 minutes
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Review by Tamara Hladik
 dward Malone is a young ambitious reporter, eager to establish his career and impress his fiancee. Naturally, he volunteers for a unique scientific expedition. Led by Professor Challenger, the expedition aims to confirm rumors of dinosaurs, which Challenger claims live in the remote jungles of the Amazon. Although Challenger hates reporters, he reluctantly admits Malone to the company, as Malone's paper agrees to finance the expedition.
Rounded out with a big game hunter and Paula, the daughter/assistant of the scientist who found the "lost world," the adventure launches. Although everyone wishes to find these fabulous creatures, all have different agendas. Challenger's are personal as well as scientific -- his reputation hangs in the balance. Malone sees the entire affair as a tool for his ascension to greater things. The big game hunter actually has eyes for Paula, and Paula really wishes to find her father, who is lost and presumed dead.
As the group sails up the Amazon, the jungle opens its great maw and closes behind them; civilization seems as distant and ephemeral as childhood's dreams. Finally, they reach a remote plateau, which rises hundreds of feet above them. They cross a felled tree that bridges a deep gorge. It crashes to the rocky depths behind them seconds after they pass. Now marooned in the lost world, they discover all its secrets. But wonder soon gives way to horror as brontosaurs yield to allosaurs, who yield to erupting volcanoes. If they can escape the lost world, they will make history. But they must survive it first.
When brontosaurs fought back
This is the original, the black-and-white silent based on the 1912 novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is of special note for it is the first feature film to extensively use stop-motion photography (by pioneer Willis O'Brien) with live action. For the true fan, this alone confirms the film as worth seeing -- it established many of the canons in the monster movie genre. For such an old film (more than 70 years), the sequences are excellent and quite extensive; they must have wowed the audiences of the day.
As a film, it's aged only moderately well. Its pace is tremendously slower than modern-day (especially American) audiences would accept, and the film's plot is anorexic. As with most other films of its kind, once the titans get into the game, plot is abandoned for prehistoric scenery and carnosaur terror. The acting, representative of its day, has a dry, antique taste, and is barely worth mention. There is also a dimly-lit minority character who looks suspiciously like a Caucasian in black paint (true to its time, but distasteful).
After 70 years, the lost world most vividly described by the film is that of the white, male elite, with its closed societies, ample wealth, and chauvinistic sensibilities. However, The Lost World is still immediately recognizable for its simple, eternal ambition -- to deliver monstrous thrills. It even delivers monstrous laughs. In one scene, an allosaur and brontosaur face off before battle. The allosaur's reptilian lips ripple in a snarl. So do the brontosaur's. They engage, and the deadly brontosaur jaws fasten around the allosaur's throat. Rrrrarrrghhh.
As I'm quite fond of stop-motion I found the special effects quite special. They contained more drama and action than all the rest of the movie. -- Tamara
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