Sequel to Jurassic Park is more gory and violent then it's predecessor. The film opens with a horde of bite-sized dinosaurs called Compsognathus attacking a little girl. The attack happens off screen, but later on we see the same little guys attack a full grown man and the result is quite gruesome.
Richard Attenborough and the kids, Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards return for cameos, but the returning star, other than the T-Rex is Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm. Goldblum's sarcastic and sardonic Malcolm was one of the best things about the first movie and he sat on the sidelines for the last half, so it is good to have him back.
Dr. Malcolm becomes a reluctant member of a group returning to the islands where Jurassic Park was created because his girlfriend Sarah (Julianne Moore) has gone there to study, the now wild dinosaurs. Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard) the new head of InGen, the company that owns Jurassic Park has also sent an expedition. Among them is big game hunter Roland Tembo who follows is own code of ethics and is out to bag a T-Rex as the greatest trophy of his hunting career.
Other characters exist but most are there to be eaten by dinosaurs. The movie ramps up the violence as it liberally borrows from such films as King Kong, and Aliens. There are two T-Rex's now and the raptors are back, but they are not seen as much as in the first film. There are a couple of chilling set pieces; a T-Rex attack on an RV, the previously mentioned Compy attack, another T-Rex attack on a camp and finally a race against Raptors to a communications center. Surprisingly the T-Rex running wild in San Diego is the least effective part of the movie and was an ending Spielberg added on. It was not in the book written by Crichton. Michael Crichton was very reluctant to write a follow-up book to the first novel but Spielberg requested one after the success of the first movie.
The movie moves along at a quick pace while extolling some pro-conservation messages. The dinosaur special effects are seamless and are the true stars of this otherwise uninspired sequel and measured against other Spielberg films, it's not his best effort, but it is a fun, entertaining summer "popcorn" picture. Lost World was followed by a sequel, Jurassic Park III and Universal is looking for a way to revive the series and turn it into a franchise. Expect a Jurassic Park IV sometime in the next couple of years.
At the Movie House rating **1/2 stars
note - I originally saw both Jurassic Park and Lost World: Jurassic Park at the Ziegfeld Theatre, the last great movie house in Manhattan
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