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For the last few years, I've been reviewing at least one shark movie for each summer, where all of them were absolute crap. And considering that I previously reviewed two terrible Dinosaur flicks in a row, I'm going to review a shark movie that actually got positive reviews when it first came out, and that movie is...



Critics everywhere (including the late Roger Ebert) were praising the film for its scary realism of two divers being stranded in the middle of the Caribbean Sea full of sharks after accidentally being left behind by a boat carrying 20 diver’s total. The film itself also did pretty well at the Box-Office. But the reaction among audiences however was divided, as some loved it for its terror, as others hated it for being boring and cheap, instead of scary. I only saw it once as a teen in Middle School, and I remember enjoying it fine, and being caught up in the suspense. But after so many years of not seeing it, and hardly ever hearing anybody (including film buffs) talk about the film, is it as good as people made out to be at the time, or was it never anything special to begin with where it was just simply over-hyped? ON WITH THE REVIEW!

 

When I watched the first 10 minutes of the film, I found myself being quickly bored by it. The film's low-budget look didn't look that visually interesting (even when we see them chilling in the Bahamas'). The characters were far from captivating. And the pacing almost felt like that 20 minutes went by instead of 10. There's even a pointless scene of them being naked in bed with each other, which just feels there for sex appeal, and nothing more. I actually remember the first 10 minutes moving quickly when I saw this as a teen; as opposed to dragging on. When I finally saw them hop aboard the boat to go Scuba diving with a group of tourists, that's when I found myself interested in the film's plot. This whole sequence makes up for the boredom that was presented in the first ten minutes of the movie, as we are treated to some beautiful underwater shots of our characters interacting with colorful sea creatures that carries the enchantment and thrill of Scuba diving as if you are underwater with them. There are even a few entertaining supporting characters during the trip such as the crew member who tells everyone on the voyage the rules, and a passenger who's played for comic-relief (Who isn’t funny, but still entertaining). You do still find yourself aware of what’s going to happen to this couple as you are watching them have fun, but just like how the characters are enjoying the underwater beauty without a care in the world, you too feel just as carefree as they are when watching all of this.

 

Once the boat is ready to leave without the two divers that are still in the water, that's when things start to get intense. The rest of the movie as we watch the couple try to survive in the water is full of nothing but undying suspense. Every single moment you spend with them in the ocean is simply breathtaking. The film's low-budget quality of having it all shot with a digital-cam actually works better than you would give it credit for. It almost feels as if you are watching a home movie, which just adds to realism of the situation. And despite how simplistic the choice of using a digital-camera sound, they still manage to get many good shots and angles that suck you into the atmosphere of feeling stranded in the middle of the ocean with these characters. Some of it does reminiscence "JAWS", but they don't feel like its intentionally ripping-off the film. The film's story and the way it’s all shot and paced does feel like its own thing. The film doesn't even have much of a score, it mostly lacks in terms of score, and the majority of music that you hear in the movie is music that you would hear in the Bahamas’. Now the instrumental music that is composed for the film works great with the suspense and emotion that's taken place in front of us, but it’s really the lack of music that makes the situation so intense. The most suspenseful scene in the movie that's shot at an extreme horrifying level is the storm sequence as one of them gets attacked by a shark, where we can only see the attack and character's suffering from the attack through the flash of lighting since the scene takes place at night. We hardly see the attack, but it’s the vagueness of it that makes it so scary.




The choice of casting two actors who aren't well known helps a great deal to the terrifying realism that surrounds the film, and the surprising part is, they're not bad. Granted the character's themselves are nothing special, but you do still find yourself caring about them, mainly because their interaction and dialogue that their given doesn't come off as unnatural or corny. You do believe that they are real people instead of characters; you do feel like that the stress and fear that they have of the situation is legit. There's never a sense that these actors are just half-assing it, or simply phoning everything in. It all feels natural. Actually the actors themselves were at times legitimately afraid. Why you may ask? Well being filmed in the water with actual sharks circling around them might be the primary reason for it. Yes, the film doesn't use any special effects for the sharks at all; they are all in fact real sharks. Even the sea critters that harm them are just as real as the sharks are. It is in some respects disappointing that we don't see them harm the characters on-screen that much, since they are real animals. But it’s the directing and the acting that makes it forgivable, especially when you don't know where they are, or when they're going to attack. What I find amazing about the film's suspense is even though I knew how the film ended from both times I watched this movie, I still found myself so wrapped-up into the terror that I was hoping that they would somehow make it out of this ok. Just seeing a boat pass by them, or seeing them drift near a buoy just leaves you in a state of hope for their chance to get out of this situation, even when knowing the overall outcome.



What I remember the advertisements for the film constantly promoting before and during its release was that the film is "BASED ON TRUE EVENTS". The film itself even starts out with that slogan before we see the opening credits, or meet our characters. And incase if you're wondering how true it is to the events that the film is based on, its very loosely. But given the little facts that the director and writers had to work with, it’s not all that surprising that plenty of liberties are going to be taken into account. I think the main reason why a good half of audiences weren't into this movie is how slow it moves. Even though the tension is always heart-pounding, the pacing is still very slow, despite being an hour and 16 minute film. And since the film is shot on a very low-budget, and is mostly taken place out in the ocean with not so interesting characters that has little to no on-screen shark action, if you're not caught up in the suspense that the film carries, then you're really going to hate this movie! I do think the thrills that this movie has are great, but I'm not going to act like that I don't understand where the hate for this movie is coming from. I personally don't mind the slow pace, I think it works towards the film's advantage (Even in the first 10 minutes since you need to slow things down to make the scenes of them being lost at sea effective), but that doesn't mean I can’t see why the film's slow pace can turn people off, especially if they're not into films like this.

After reviewing so many crappy shark movies in the past, I'm completely surprised that there's actually a good one out there that stands on its own. I think the primary reason for that is because it’s mostly centered on the survival of the characters, than it is centered on the sharks waiting for their chance to eat them. But while being more of a survival flick, instead of a shark flick, since one of the main fears of the movie involve sharks this still counts as a shark movie and a very suspenseful one if I may add. It’s not as great of a masterpiece as the ultimate shark film "JAWS", but as far as shark movies go this one comes close to being almost as scary as the master of shark movies that can never be topped. It’s a pity that people hardly talk about it or watch it anymore, because I do think it’s a highly underrated movie. It’s clearly not for everyone, but it is still one of a kind.

RATING 5/5 

CARNOSAUR

Considering that my last review was on the sequel to the first "Jurassic Park" movie, I'm going to review another Dinosaur film which is...



A month before the release of Spielberg's Dinosaur classic that had groundbreaking effects, another Dinosaur film produced by B movie director Roger Corman was made to cash in on the hype surrounding "Jurassic Park". The film made back its money (which isn't surprising since the film was made under a low budget as it was shot for only 18 days), but the overall reaction among audiences and critics were "I hope the Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park look better than this". Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film a Thumbs Down and labeled it as the "Worst Movie Of The Year", while Gene Siskel gave it a Thumbs Up despite criticizing how fake the Dinosaurs looked. Roger Ebert would later on make fun of Gene Siskel for giving the film a Thumbs Up in an episode of "The Critic" where he and Gene split up. After seeing the review from Siskel and Ebert, knowing about the film's producer, and hearing about when the film was released, I decided to review it under curiosity to see if I would enjoy it for what it is, or despise it almost as much as Ebert did. So is the film entertaining, or is it just plain bad; ON WITH THE REVIEW!

The film stars Diane Ladd (who is the Mother of Laura Dern who stared as Dr. Sattler in "Jurassic Park") as a mad scientist who is breeding chickens and impregnating some of them with Dinosaur DNA in hopes to have Dinosaurs rule the Earth once again, and kill off the human race. To make matters worse, one of her Dinosaurs escapes and goes on a killing spree to eat everyone it meets. The only people that can stop her plan of inhabiting the world with Dinosaurs is an alcoholic security watchman (Raphael Sbarge) and an environmental activist (Jennifer Runyon).



The premise sounds straight forward like a classic B monster movie that seems simple and entertaining, but truth be told, I only gave you the basics because believe it or not, for some strange and out of the blue reason a virus created by the scientist begins to spread where women are giving birth to baby Dinosaurs, as they die in the process. And when the Government finds out about the virus, they just kill people whether or not they are infected. The overall concept of women giving birth to Dinosaur's isn't scary, disturbing, or even remotely funny. It's just stupid and flat out gross, pure and simple. And adding in this stupid virus to the plot right in the middle of the film with no build-up to it is just confusing and feels there just to expand on the film’s run time. The logic in the film involving the Dinosaurs and the virus is also complex and head-scratching to the max. And the conversations that the characters have about these issues aren’t any where near interesting for how dull the acting and the discussion themselves are. I'm more interested in the Coca-Cola cans that they are all drinking out of in a few scenes, rather than the stuff that they are actually saying about the Dinosaur, which is definitely not a good sign when forced Product Placement becomes the center of attention. But what annoys me the most about these boring conversations is how they keep interrupting the Dinosaur action that we get, which sadly breaks the pace for these scenes. And speaking of pace, since the film is flooded with tedious conversations that are edited in at the wrong time, it makes the pacing for this hour and 22 minute movie incredibly slow. Things get even more tedious when we keep getting descriptions of each character and location that's shown on the screen, which feels extremely pointless. Considering that each place we visit are not that far away from the other locations we see throughout the film, and the fact that we can already guess who these characters are and what they do, there just isn't really a need for all of these repetitive descriptions. And the crazy part about them is that there's so much stuff written on the screen, the film hardly gives you the time to read them, since they come and go so fast that it just in the end emphasizes how unneeded they are. I'm not going to waste my time talking about the characters because they're all boring, annoying, and forgettable who only feel there to get killed by Dinosaurs. Even Diane Ladd who Gene Siskel (and even Roger Ebert himself) praised in the movie, bored me for how monotone and bland her performance is, where she even lacks that classic and over the top mad scientist personality that you would expect to see in a B movie like this.



Before I talk about the effects for the Dinosaurs, I just want to make it clear that I’m going to be nice and judge the effects on its own merits instead of comparing them to the effects in "Jurassic Park" because lets be honest there's no contest at all. The effects used for the Dinosaurs in the film were done by a miniature remote control puppet, hand puppets, guys in costumes, and a full sized 16 foot tall robot. Now that's a creative variety of effects made for a film on a tight budget where the effects will only be shot in 18 days. And the concept of filming the Dinosaur scenes at night to try to hide how fake they look seemed like a promising idea. But as impressive as it sounds, the effects still suck. Even when filming the Dinosaur's at night to hide how fake they look, they still look awful. All they pretty much did was try to make them suck less. They don't look real, they look as plastic and rubbery as a toy Dinosaur. There are even times when you can spot when there's a guy in a Dinosaur costume, just by judging how quickly they move, compared to their stiff and robotic like movements that we keep seeing. There are old films with Stop-Motion Dinosaurs and actors in rubber suits (particularly the Godzilla films) that look more convincing and real than this! The cheesiest effect in the whole movie in my opinion has to be the effect for the T-Rex walking through the city, as it keeps its mouth hanging open that gives him a duh look on his face. It looks silly, as opposed to being scary! The T-Rex for some reason also changes its look between shots that makes you question what the director was thinking for how noticeable it looks. The only credible thing that the effects team did with the T-Rex is the sound effect for his roar which isn’t scary, or sounds awesome for that matter, but it’s serviceable at best. Given the film's budget and limited amount of days to shoot each scene, I do think the effects team did everything they can to try to make them work, but that still doesn't change the fact that the Dinosaur's still look like crap.



But as bad as the Dinosaur's look, do the scenes with them killing people make up for it? Well not really. I do like the gore effects that were used for these scenes, but in its long run they're sadly just as boring as the plot and characters are. The POV shots used for the Dinosaur's don't at all make me believe that I'm seeing through their eyes. They looks like the style that filmmakers would use to make a Found Footage film. You're just constantly aware that there was someone filming all this. A lot of the film's editing and pacing for these scenes with the Dinosaur's attacking feels very off which ruins the suspense that the film tries to bring. The scene when the off-screen Dinosaur scratches a guy's face after hatching out of an egg didn't feel like he was actually being attacked by one for how poor the editing was, and its use of the unconvincing POV shots. And half of the editing for the scenes when people are being killed by the Dinosaurs move so quickly that you can't see a thing, which comes off as another obvious and failed attempt to make the Dinosaur's seem less fake. One of the weirdest shots in the whole movie is when a Dinosaur kills its first victim where we cut to a mirror in the shape of a naked woman on the victim’s truck as the Dinosaur and the body that's reflected in the mirror moves up and down! That's just weird, and in a strange way for how its filmed perverted (like Michael Bay perverted). Some times when a person gets attacked, the actors themselves and the way scenes are filmed and edited don't give you that sense of pain that they're experiencing, even though we're seeing gore, especially when we get a predictable jump scare of a fake Dinosaur biting off someone’s head. You'll also find plenty of stupid moments surrounding the characters when they're being attacked or chased by a Dinosaur, in terms of both acting and writing. One of the best examples of that can be found in terms idiotic moments involving the characters are when two hippies are tied up (for unexplained reasons) as they are being eaten by Dinosaur's. The first victim greets a Dinosaur as if he was talking to a friend without showing any signs of fear or amazement that he's seeing a Dinosaur up close; while the other one goes from screaming at the top of her lungs, to suddenly shutting up and looking relaxed after when a Dinosaur amputates her leg (shouldn't she be screaming even more). Another great example of the idiocy surrounding the characters is when our hero finds a latter as he's being chased by a T-Rex, he just stands there for a few seconds to only figure out that he can climb the latter that he's standing right in front of to escape the beast. But the biggest idiotic moment from both the characters and the writing is when our leads find a wounded teenager who previously spoke English before he was being attacked by a Dinosaur, and is now for some reason speaking in Spanish. What did the Dinosaur change his language or something when it was attacking him, it makes no sense! As for the film's overall look it's just as boring as the Jurassic Park sequel that I previously reviewed, but I do think the colors and lightning for when a person walks into a room full of lasers and force fields looked pretty neat. It's just to bad that the scene itself isn't scary or so much as sucks you in to its breathtaking atmosphere.



What I find fascinating about this movie is, even though it’s obviously cashing in on the "Jurassic Park" hype, this film pretty much rips-off a few scenes and ideas from the first two "Alien" movies as the filmmakers try to cover up their attempts of plagiarism by replacing Aliens with Dinosaurs. For example, remember how in the first "Alien" movie that after the Alien is born, it quickly grows-up in a few scenes later. Same thing happens with the Dinosaur's. And having them being impregnated in a persons body where they violently pop out of their stomach, and kill the person in the process just like how the Alien was born, just adds insults to injury. Even the way the scene is shot looks similar to the Alien popping out of John Hurt's stomach. As for the film ripping things off from the second Alien film, remember that climatic scene when Ripley fights against the Queen Alien with an exosuit cargo-loader; our main characters fight against the T-Rex with skid-steer loaders that isn't at all as awesome as the scene that the film is clearly copying. And if you think ripping-off the first two "Alien" movies while competing against "Jurassic Park" isn't shameful enough for you, the concept of military people killing characters who are not at all infected with the virus is very reminiscence to Zombie films which feels just as stupid and out of place as the whole forced virus issue that the film just randomly throws at us.

On the whole, I don't think “Carnosaur” isn’t anywhere near close to being thee worst movie made during that year, nor would I consider it to be one of the worst movies that I've ever seen either, but it is still a bad movie. I mean the film did at first have a decent set-up, and the gore effects used for when the Dinosaurs' eat people looked cool. And as fake as the Dinosaurs looked, you can at least still tell that the people creating the effects were putting in some kind of effort. But instead of being a cheesy but entertaining Dinosaur B movie, it’s sadly just as boring as the last Dinosaur film that I reviewed. The premise and logic is convoluted; the characters and acting are a snooze-fest; the effects for the Dinosaurs are dreadful; the scenes with the Dinosaur's attacking people aren't fun or suspenseful; and the idea of the film being made to just make money off of the "Jurassic Park" hype that was going on at the time, while stealing ideas and scenes from other films is just shameful. It’s not a god awful movie by any means, but it’s still in my opinion unwatchable for how slow and unexciting it is.

RATING 1/5

THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK

Last July 4th I reviewed the first film that Steven Spielberg ever directed, which was a horror film called "Duel". And as I was reviewing the film, I talked a bit about the kinship that Spielberg has always felt between "Duel" and two of his other works involving man vs monster which are "JAWS" and "Jurassic Park"; that I wholeheartedly agree with. They are different films that many would see as just three separate films that have nothing in common except that they were directed by the same person. But they all still carried similar traits in terms of premise, thrills, directing, and effects, along with having a few other little subtle nods and references to each other that many may not catch on. And because of the similarities that these three classic monster flicks shared, I personally gave them the unofficial title of being known as "The Spielberg Monster Trilogy". The reason why I say "Unofficial" (aside from the obvious fact that Spielberg never gave his monster trilogy a name, despite the kinship that he feels between these three films) is because they unfortunately got sequels as films like "JAWS" and "Jurassic Park" became their own separate film franchise, as their sequels have always paled in comparison. The majority of sequels weren't directed by Steven Spielberg, which would explain why I wouldn't consider them as being part of his Monster Trilogy, and why they failed at being as great as their predecessors. But Spielberg however did direct one of the crappy sequels from his unofficial trilogy, and that's the first of the sequels to follow after his Summer Blockbuster "Jurassic Park"...

  

As a kid growing up in the 90s, I was probably one of the few 90s kids who wasn't crazy about Dinosaurs. I had nothing against them; I just wasn't all that interested in them. But if there was one thing involving Dinosaurs that I kept hearing from almost everybody around me talking about (not counting the purple one who was annoying and creepy), it was the Dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park". Whenever these reptilian creatures were ever brought up, people would keep telling me how cool they were in that movie and that I had to go see it. Eventually my Dad bought me a copy of "Jurassic Park", but it wasn't the classic that everyone was raving about. It was instead its sequel. But since I had a "Jurassic Park" film in my possession, I figured that since it had Dinosaurs in it, doing cool Dinosaur stuff, I didn't think it would matter. Plus the sequel has been advertised nearly every where I went, so I assumed that it was just as good as the first film was. When I sat down and watched the film, just like when I saw "The Phantom Menace" in theaters, I was so incredibly bored by it (Even when we got to the Dinosaur action), I decided to not see the first film, thinking that it was going to be just as boring as this film was, where the only good things in it are the Dinosaurs. It wasn't until 2005 when I was in the fifth grade, where I finally decided to give the first film a look, despite how much the sequel prevented me from seeing it. And when I finally rented a copy of the first film at my local library and watched it on my VCR, I was hooked, and completely blown-away by it, with the thought that I was seriously missing out on something spectacular. I didn't see the sequel that scared me away from seeing the first film, until I was at my senior year in Middle School, and when I sat down and saw it again, my reaction was "eh". It had good effects, but every thing else felt pretty dull. Now that I'm an adult with more of a critical mind, did the film get any better? ON WITH THE REVIEW!

Four years after the chaos of John Hammond's (Richard Attenborough) attempt of creating a Dinosaur theme park and miserably failing at it. Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is told by Hammond about another Island that they contain the Dinosaur's on, where they created them before moving them to the park. But after the tragic accident in the park itself, a hurricane wiped out the other Island that inhabited the Dinosaurs, and now the Dinosaurs are loose and free without any supervision. Hammond also asks Malcolm to go to the Island to document the Dinosaurs with two other people in hope to encourage people to go against human interference on the Island, since his Nephew Peter (Arliss Howard) plans to capture the Dinosaurs and transfer them to a Park in San Diego. But Malcolm refuses Hammond's pleas for help, until he discovers that his girlfriend Sarah (Julianne Moore) is already on the Island documenting the Dinosaurs, by herself. After going to the Island to find that his girlfriend is completely fine, Malcolm then decides to sabotage Peter's plan of capturing the Dinosaurs fearing that it'll lead to more chaos. But as they have to fight and run away from Dinosaurs, while stopping Peter and his gang of poachers, Malcolm also discovers that his daughter Kelly (Vanessa Lee Chester) has stowed away on the boat heading for the Island because she can no longer take being neglected by her Father.



If you read my review on "Jurassic Park" then you already know that Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm is my favorite character and performance in the movie. The majority of the film's best quotes undoubtedly come from Goldblum's cynical personality and dry sense of humor. And every time I see him appear on screen making sarcastic comments, and discussing about the dangers of Hammond's handling with the Dinosaur's with his "deplorable excess of personality"; I always find myself being enjoyably entertained by him, while also getting a good laugh every now and then. Due to Goldblum's popularity in the first film, Spielberg decided to make him the star of the second movie, and the result of casting Goldblum as the sequel’s leading star was highly disappointing. Turning this once wisecracking scientist, into a leading badass with a bit of a more serious approach compared to his comical personality in the first film, fails on so many levels that I still can't believe that Goldblum is playing the same character. All personality and likability that was given to the character feels completely sucked out of him, for how dull and lifeless he sounds and acts in the film. There's hardly a single expression that Goldblum gives to the character that doesn't feel lifeless or half-assed. Even when he's angry or worried, he doesn't at all seem like that he actually cares. It almost feels like that Goldblum doesn't even want to be in this film for how uninterested he looks on-screen. In fact, when he first enters the film, he just stands there yawning looking very tired; that's how you introduce a beloved comic relief character in your sequel?



Goldblum does get plenty of lines that are supposed to be funny, but even those moments feel very half-baked, and even at times forced. For example, there's a scene where Goldblum and two other characters are dangling over a cliff, and when one of his assistants tries to save them and asks if they want anything else,  Goldblum responds that he wants a cheeseburger, as the rest of the gang join in on his sarcasm! Holy smoke, you're dangling over a cliff, and yet you just hang there joking around as if you don't care that you could fall to your death at any second?! That was completely the wrong time to give Goldblum a sarcastic comment that's supposed to be funny. I honestly can't remember a single time where I found myself chuckling or getting so much as a giggle when Goldblum delivers these comical on-liners for how tedious and at times out of place they are. And when a famous comical character who’s played by the same actor in a sequel, fails to make you laugh, that's when you know that there's a problem with the movie. Now in all fairness for Goldblum's presence and his character's sudden change of personality, the sequel does explain why he's serious since he lost his job as a scientist for telling people about the accident in "Jurassic Park" which caused Hammond's nephew to make him look like a lunatic so that no one would believe him. But I still call bull on that because his change of personality isn't just flat out boring to the point where even his "Uhs" are not enjoyable, but you're telling me that none of the other survivors (Not even the kids) told anybody about the Island where there are man-eating Dinosaurs without any restraint? I don't buy it, not for one bit!



On top of the poor choice of casting Goldblum as the lead, as I was watching the film I always found myself getting the impression that the character of Dr. Alan Grant played by Sam Neil should have been the sequel's star instead. I say this because even though I love Goldblum a lot in the first movie, Grant did have a story-arc, and more of an interaction with the dangers surrounding the park than Malcolm did. In fact, Malcolm spent the entire second half of the film recovering from his wounds safe and sound in the control room as all the chaos was going on. He wasn't constantly being surrounded by danger like Grant was, and he didn't have any development through his experience in the park since he was right about every thing. To add to my theory of feeling like Grant should have been the star of the sequel is the scene when Malcolm is having a bit of a reunion with the kids that's supposed to be heartwarming. Why would the kids be so happy and excited to see Malcolm? They didn't spend any time with Malcolm in the first film. I don't even remember them ever sharing a piece of dialogue together. It was Grant who they had a close connection with (with the exception of their Grandpa of course), not Malcolm. Grant was the one who escorted them through the park and taught them a few facts about Dinosaurs. So the idea of having the kids being excited over a visit of a character who we never saw them spend time with, makes no sense, as Goldblum himself seems to acknowledged how out of nowhere this moment is by how disinterested he acts when he encounters them.



And to top off my reasons why I feel like Grant should have been the film's star is because of the overall reason why Malcolm goes to the Island. First of all, wouldn't it make more sense for Hammond to hire Grant instead of Malcolm, since he specializes in Dinosaurs, while Malcolm specializes in "Chaos Theory"? There's no reason for Hammond to hire a Mathematician on an expedition to document the Dinosaurs (aside from the B.S. reason why Malcolm is no longer a scientist). Grant should have been Hammond's first choice, and Malcolm should have been his last choice out of all the survivors from the first film (not counting his children). And there's not even so much as a poor excuse or hint of why Grant refused to go to the Island. He's just overall forgotten, despite that he rescued his grandchildren! Second and last of all, wouldn't it be more interesting if Grant's girlfriend Ellie Sattler was on that Island, who decided to go to the Island for finical issues or something? I know Hammond was kind of sexist towards her in the first film, but after turning on the power and helping Grant and the kids get away from the Velociraptors, I think she would have earned Hammond's respect. Plus Hammond did invite Malcolm's girlfriend on an Island full of unsupervised Dinosaurs despite that she's a women, so why not Ellie? This film was pretty much begging for Grant to be the lead, and yet we have to deal with a now serious Ian Malcolm as our hero, who has lost all sense of charm.

But as much as I bash Goldblum's character and performance, I'm not going to act like that he's the only person in this film who gives a bad performance, because everybody else in this movie are just as badly acted and poorly written as Malcolm is, which is an obvious sign of bad writing and directing. And even if they did cast Sam Neil and Laura Dern in their respective roles, despite that their presence in the film would make more sense than Malcolm's appearance; I still don't think they can rise above the poor directing, or overcome the bad writing that the characters in this film are given. Every single character and performance in this film is just unwatchable. I can't think of a single character that I cared about when watching this movie, or so much as a moment where I found their conversations or interaction with one another to be interesting or believable. Sure the characters in the first movie were very simplistic, but at least you still enjoyed being around them. You were interested in hearing them talk about Dinosaurs; you loved watching Malcolm work-off his humor on the characters; you understood and felt Hammond's passion for bringing the world something great, only to see him fail miserably at it. These were characters that you legitimately liked that can appeal to both kids and adults, as you still find yourself remembering these characters as you get older. With these characters on the other hand, they're dull and forgettable. Julianne Moore is that typical damsel in distress who acts smart but foolishly gets herself into trouble or other people in trouble, as she and Goldblum have little to no chemistry together. Malcolm's daughter Kelly is the bland whiny innocent who suffers from the busy Father who never spends time with his family trope, that's not at all interesting, nor even has a resolution (at least not one that feels earned). Richard Attenborough as John Hammond (who only appears in two scenes) is trying hard to capture the same charm that he had in the first movie, but he unfortunately comes off as corny and tiring. Richard Schiff as Malcolm's equipment expert leaves little to no impression on you, as his only purpose in the film is to get killed by the Dinosaur's. And Vince Vaughn as an experienced documentarian and environmentalist is boring and quiet, and yet still somehow comes off as annoying and obnoxious, where half of the time I'm not sure if he's supposed to play his character as a badass, a subtle comic-relief, or both.

The film as I mentioned earlier, does have villains, and not one of them is memorable, or even comes off as threatening. They hunt the Dinosaurs and plan to bring them back to an area based on the original park in San Diego, but they aren't the ones responsible for the chaos that goes on in this film, unlike how Wayne Knight's character in the first film was. They don't even release the T-Rex when she arrives in San Diego, some idiot guard investigating the crash of the ship that she was in releases her by mistake without even knowing that she was in the ship's cargo hold. Knight's character actually turned off the fences that caused the Dinosaur's to break free, these villains don't so much as make a mistake of letting the Dinosaur's run wild and attack our heroes. It's really the heroes that cause a good half of the mayhem that happens in this movie. They steal a wounded baby T-Rex that attracts the Mother and the Father. Set-free the Dinosaur's from their cages, only to have them cause a ruckus of endangering people's lives, including their own. And foolishly lure a T-Rex to their camp, because Moore simply did not bother to wash off the blood from the Baby T-Rex on her jacket (though to be fair, I thought the T-rexes' instincts were strictly based on movements). It also doesn't help their case of being a complete pair of unlikable idiots that are responsible for the dangers around them, when they steal the ammo from the poachers to leave them to be eaten by the Dinosaur's, despite the fact that they have saved them from death once, and escorted them through the Jungle! I get that they are trying to stop them from bringing the Dinosaur's to the US, and that they believe that the Dinosaur's should be left alone in their natural habitat, but these characters only make things worse than they already are! People are dying because of them! And their attempts of preventing the poachers from bringing the Dinosaur's to the U.S. still miserably fails, since they forgot to...oh I don't know...steal their tranquilizer darts, which is the way more efficient way of capturing an animal, then with bullets! And don't get me wrong, the poacher's are greedy assholes who are just as stupid and unlikable as the heroes are, but at least they're not heartless! This whole entire "Animal Rights" message of protecting Dinosaur's (that will kill you regardless) is just a pointless and half-assed moral, that's a complete mess. As old and basic as the moral of not trying to play the role of god was in the first movie, it at least stayed focused on that moral and theme, where Spielberg and the writers knew exactly what they were doing to execute this moral so beautifully. This whole concept of involving dinosaurs with "Animal Rights", just doesn't at all feel well thought out.



But I know what you're thinking. You don't care if the characters are boring, or if the story and its moral doesn't make sense. You just want to be blown away by the effects for the Dinosaur's, and see them eat people and stuff like that. And yeah, that's why people would ever consider watching this movie to begin with. So in terms of action and effects involving the Dinosaur's, does the film deliver? Well the Special Effects for the Dinosaur's are still cool. It is obvious that the film is more reliant on its CGI than the first film was, but at least this film still used animatronics and puppets that look pretty damn convincing (unlike in the rest of the sequels that followed after this movie, where the Dinosaur's look so computer generated that you hardly ever get the feeling that they're actually there). The most realistic looking effect for the Dinosaur in the whole entire film, that made me believe that it was actually living and breathing, was the baby T-Rex. I never at all felt like I was looking at a Dinosaur that was an animatronic; I actually thought that the baby T-Rex was in pain as he was being carried away by our leads.

 

The sequel also does offer some cool ideas and things that we haven't seen in the first film. While the first film showed audiences a wide variety of Dinosaur's that most of us are familiar with, the sequel gets to show a few more Dinosaur's that many people wished to see such as Compsognathus', a Pteranodons, and the most popular requested one of them all, the Stegosaurus'. And since we have a few new Dinosaur's to add to John Hammond's collection, we get to see them cause twice as much the chaos as they did in the first film. Furthermore unlike how the last film was a Sci-Fi Family Adventure flick mixed with horror; this film has more of a darker edge then what the original film carried, by giving it a dark and gritty adult look and feel, and just simply have the Dinosaur's kill people left and right, rather than having us be enchanted by them during half of their on-screen appearance. Plus, since the Dinosaur's are no longer restraint from killing people, we do get some very interesting set-ups involving them, such as the Compsognathus' attacking a little girl wandering alone on the beach; two T-Rex's knocking a Van over a cliff with our leads inside it; and setting the film's climax in a city with the T-Rex on the loose. We also get to see them commit some cool deaths that I wish were in the first film, such as seeing a person getting stomped by a foot of a Dinosaur, and witnessing two T-Rex's tare a guy apart that's on the same level as cool as seeing "the blood-sucking lawyer" being eaten to shreds by the T-Rex in the first movie. So this movie does seem to give us what it promises.



But as good as the effects are, and as awesome as everything that I just mentioned sounds, the pay-off is still just as disappointing as seeing Jeff Goldblum lose everything that we admired about him in the first movie. Spielberg may have put some new Dinosaur's in this sequel, but half of the new ones that I just mentioned hardly do anything. The Pteranodons only appears for the final shot of the movie; and the Stegosaurus' only get one scene that tries to be both enchanting and thrilling, but goes by so fast that you get the feeling that Spielberg was only shoehorning them into the movie because the fans simply wanted to see them. As for making this film darker than the first film was, while I'm not totally against the idea of having a dark and more realistic jungle environment as the Dinosaur's come across more as monsters, instead of a creatures trying to adapt to their environment; the overall result of changing the film's look and tone from the first movie just looks and feels incredibly boring. The film is covered with so much black and grey that it doesn't make the environment interesting to look at, or make it feel dangerous for how bland it looks; when in the first film, it had a warm and colorful environment that made it look visually interesting, while still giving it a dark and ominous look and feel that was terrifying! And since the Dinosaurs in this film are now portrayed more as monsters, instead of wild animals trying to survive and adapt, it not only makes the "Animal's Rights" message even more pointless and confused, but part of the reason that made the first film so great was they did take their time to give these animals a sense of awe and enchantment. When we see the character's gazing, or interacting with a Dinosaur that's harmless, we the audience wish we could actually be there with the characters experiencing their encounter with them for these moments. And even though this film does have some whimsical scenes involving the Dinosaurs, they come and go by so fast that you don't find yourself taking the time to embrace these enchanting moments. Also if the film's bland look, and lack of respect for the Dinosaur's as Animals isn't less enchanting for you, the film's pace runs so slow, that I almost felt like that 3 hours went by, instead of 2. When in the first movie the pacing knew when to be slow and relaxing, and when to be fast and thrilling.



And if you're thinking at this point that I find the action involving the Dinosaurs to be boring and slow, you're absolutely correct. I really do want to like the action that these scenes have to offer, because the effects and the set-ups are cool and inventive. I was trying very hard to get invested into the action and thrills that the film threw at me. But no matter how I hard I try to push myself to enjoy these moments, I simply can't for how stale and unintentionally goofy they are. I wanted to be enchanted and scared of the Compsognathus' as the little girl was in the beginning. But the scene felt like a weak duplicate of Nedry's encounter with Dilophosaurus (that's duplicated again when we see these seemingly harmless creatures a second and third time) only without a death (which would have been disturbing knowing that a little girl was killed by a Dinosaur), that ends with one of the silliest transitions that I've ever seen in a movie. I wanted to be thrilled by the Mother and Father T-Rex's attack on the van dangling over a cliff, just as much as when the T-Rex attacked the Jeeps in the previous film. But I found myself overall bored with it for how slow the sequence moves, how little the two T-Rex's were attacking on-screen, and how much it reminds me of the T-Rex's first attack in the sequel's predecessor. But I will admit, the part with the glass breaking whenever Julianne Moore breathed was pretty suspenseful; too bad that only lasted for a very short period of time.



What really infuriates me about the film's lack of scares and wonderment involving the Dinosaur's is how the film portrays the Velociraptors. Remember how awesome, scary, and smart they were in the first film; well that's all pretty much gone here. When I saw them appear on-screen killing people and attacking our leads, I was never once scared by them. There was no suspense or tension involving the human's encounter with these awesome Dinosaurs, it felt lacking. The way they pop-up are just cheap jump scares with no pay-off. Their first scene of killing the hunters as they were hidden in the bushes had me bored, instead of leaving me in complete terror like the rest of the crew running to save their skins. And the chase that they have with our boring leads didn't at all hold me on the edge of my seat, especially when comparing it to the Raptors hunting the character's in the climax to the first film. In addition to the insult to injury of the Raptors losing everything that made them scary, some of the things that they do in the movie are just as painfully idiotic as the things that the human characters do. They let their prey get away because they're too busy fighting each other because of an accident. And one of them literally gets their face kicked by a little girl, just by simply being told to look at her, as the Raptor just stares at her for 5 seconds, rather then jumping up at her. I can buy the kids in the first movie outsmarting the Raptors since they are hunting them in a kitchen, an environment that they are completely unfamiliar with. But seeing a little girl physically kicking a smart Raptor by using the oldest trick in the book to gain the animal's attention is a stretch too far that gets very cringe worthy. The Raptors overall presence in this movie feels more like an afterthought, as Spielberg and the writers felt like that they had to fit them into the sequel somehow since they were as big of a hit as the T-Rex was.



Speaking of the T-Rex, the whole climax when she's running wild around San Diego I'll admit is the only entertaining part of the movie, but there is still plenty of things wrong with. As a teenager when I saw the movie from beginning to end, I remember being disappointed for how short the scene was. But after not seeing this movie in quite awhile, I thought maybe the scene was actually longer than I realized, and that my memory of it was just vague. But after seeing this scene again, it turns out that my memories of being disappointed in the sequences' overall length weren't deceiving me. The whole sequence of the T-Rex causing havoc on the City only lasts for at least 4 minutes, and instead of seeing her destroy stuff in dramatic fashion, the scene instead sadly plays itself more as a joke. We have a kid who see's the T-Rex in his backyard drinking water from the pool and eating a dog while it's still inside the dog house, as the kid doesn't look scared or blown away by it. The reactions that the screaming people running away from the T-Rex have are unbelievably comical. There's a movie store that a bus crashes into that's full of fake posters that are so silly and cheesy, that you'd thought that they would be in a parody film, instead of a "Jurassic Park" movie. And one of the film's writers David Koepp makes a forced and over the top cameo appearance as a civilian getting eaten by the T-Rex, whose credited as the "Unlucky Bastard". This sequence is so out of place with it’s over the top comedy and style, that it's almost as if Spielberg didn't have the budget to make a long and exciting climax of destruction that's thrilling and intense. He couldn't do a scene where the Velociraptors jump on board of the ship carrying the T-Rex and kill the crew as he originally intended (which would explain perfectly how the T-Rex was able to kill people in places of the ship that she couldn't fit in and not leave so much as trail of destruction behind. And why she's still trapped down in the ship's hold after she supposedly ate the crew), so I wouldn't be surprised if Spielberg was like "SCREW IT ALL! Let's make this climax as incredibly silly as possible" because of budget and time restraint.

Spielberg himself actually admitted that he wasn't into creating this sequel the same way he felt when he created the first film by stating "I beat myself up... growing more and more impatient with myself... It made me wistful about doing a talking picture, because sometimes I got the feeling I was just making this big silent-roar movie... I found myself saying, 'Is that all there is? It's not enough for me.'"; and man does the overall result show. I do think the effects are great, and that the film does have some cool and exciting ideas; but the execution for these interesting ideas and set-ups are so weak that the effects for the Dinosaur's don't even save these good ideas from failing. The characters and performances are dull. The film's dark look is boring. The scenes with the Dinosaurs lack any of the awe, and scares that first film had with them. The "Animal Rights" message involving the Dinosaur's feels forced. And I don't overall get that same sense of adventure, thrill, and excitement that the first film brought. It's a very bland movie that's hardly entertaining. I don't care if Spielberg directed this unnecessary sequel, because part of what made his three monsters films so successful was because they were huge staples in Spielberg's career as a filmmaker that he put a lot of heart and passion into them. When with this film, he seems to be forcefully creating it by popular demand and money.

RATING 1/5