* 1/2             The Lost World #4, Sort Of.

Something has survived, unfortunately. In traditional Hollywood fashion, the sequel of a great movie isn't as good as the first one. Unfortunately, this is a lot worse than other bad sequals. Quite frankly, it sucked.

Even though the original island is still around, they have to go to another island to find dinosaurs. Apparently, they really did carpet bomb the original one like in the book, but forgot to mention it. The John Hammond character sends the Ian Malcolm character to the island for research, even though Ian is just a mathematician who Hammond said about him in the first movie that "I really hate that man". Two groups go to the island, amazingly at the same time, the environmentalist researchers who want to study the dinosaurs, led by Ian, and a bazilion tasty hunter people, who want to capture the dinosaurs. The environmentalists let loose the captured dinosaurs, who blow things up but amazingly don't kill anybody, and then a couple of T. Rexes destroy the environmentalist camp, because the ideots bring a baby T. Rex to their truck! So, guess what, the two groups get together, and run around through the woods to find a radio to call for help. People get eaten, but only the bad guys. Then, a T. Rex gets captured, send to the mainland, and obviously escapes (how original!). People get eaten again, and the dinosaur is sent back to the island, so it can live happily ever after (and people suddenly forget that they were eaten).

Well, for starters, this movie is a lot different from the first. Sometimes that's a good thing, and this time its not. It's also different from the book. The original Jurassic Park book made a movie that was different, which made another book that was like the movie, which made a movie that was more like the first book. Another interesting thing is that the good guys have fewer characters, so more character developments can occur, but the bad guys got a lot more so the dinosaurs can have food. Characters were kind of squished together; the two truck designers were morphed into one and same for the two kids. The movie was way off from a great book, and more like the first, which wasn't so great. It even stole some scenes from the first book (the compys at the start and the T. Rex waterfall scene). Didn't do much for making things the same.

This movie doesn't seam to be directed by the same person that did the original Jurassic Park, even though it is. The plot sucks, it doesn't flow right, holes everywhere, bad acting, mismatched scenes, dinosaurs were they shouldn't be, no dinosaurs when their should be, the plot doesn't go up and down, it stays the same, there is no climax, and a bazillion little mistakes. Plus, the whole thing was optically made darker, which is not a good thing when it is set in broad daylight. It's to dark of a movie. Plus, the dinosaurs, especially the raptors, were not done well plot wise. They have been reduced from respectable, awe-inspiring, great works of nature to common movie bad guys. They are made to be bad, which is not good, especially when the moral of the story is that nature is good, leave it alone. Plus, they are dumbed down and a whole lot slower. Half the movie is spent by people running from slow dinosaurs. The book explains why they are stupid: they are factory rejects. Basically, when a dinosaur wasn't cloned properly, the idiot scientists decided to destroy them by releasing them into the wild. Well, rejectable as they may be, they survived, and ate people. Exept the good guys, who could outsmart, outrun, and outdig them easily. This movie also has a bunch of mistakes here. One lowly person was eaten, and that apparently was all the food a T. Rex needed. In fact, the first guy eaten was split between two of them, and that was sufficient. The trailer on the cliff scene had a lot of mistakes. For one, it never explained why the T. Rexes were doing it (according to the book, it's territorial). Plus, they kept pushing it, and then running away, and coming back, and running away again. And one major mistake: there were a bunch of people running from dinosaurs, and they were holding guns, but they never used them. The end sequence with the T. Rex attacking the city was cool, but the bad parts canceled out the good parts. For one thing, completely unoriginal. Plus, nobody seemed to notice a T. Rex running loose. Nobody bothered to call the police so they can shoot it down! And when the police finally arrived, the cowards ran away! Plus, in the end, there was a scene of the T. Rexes right next to the herd of dinosaurs, who didn't even notice the predators! There is a bazilion more mistakes about this movie. For a list of 91 of them, go here: http://www.jabootu.com/lostworldnugget.htm .

I watched this movie on video about a month ago, and it took me this long to write a review on this stinker. Reason is because it's tough to motivate myself to think about writing about something so bad. I didn't even bother watching it again, I couldn't bear to watch it one more time. Well, actually, there is one redeeming quality: the special effects. They really are quite good, better in fact than the first. But as good as they are, the plot sucks to bad to bear through it. Unlike a stop-motion movie, this one doesn't have the "coolness" or the replay value of one of those, so it's not worth watching. Basically, if you want to see a movie about people running from dinosaurs and getting eaten, and you don't care about plot, go ahead and watch it. Otherwise, just forget it was ever made.

Plot isn't that bad (well, maybe it is)

Great Special Effects.

A few good action scenes.

Dinosaurs attacking cities! Yehaa!

Running from dinosaurs is a little cool.

Well, I've seen worse sequels (Star Wars: Episode I)

Bad, bad, bad plot.

Unrealistically dark.

Really dumb the whole way.

Dinosaurs don't act like dinosaurs.

A bunch of useless vehicles put in to sell toys.

First island looks better than this one.

Seeing dinosaurs isn't worth it to bear through the bad plot.

To many bad things to count! Every time I see it (which is rare), I see more mistakes!

Credits