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
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