By the time this article is published many of you will no doubt have seen the sequel to Jurassic Park. For those who haven't seen the movie don't worry, you haven't missed out on much. First of all it's a sequel. Sequels have a long reputation for being less intense as the original. The Empire Strikes Back is a good example, though The Return of the Jedi which followed was a sci-fi masterpiece.

The Lost World, as you may expect, embraces the special effects which made it's predecessor so popular and unique. Having watched the movie I must admit that there was some pretty cool effects. In the original there was no real interaction between the dinosaurs , objects and people. The camera would just show, for example, a dinosaur jumping out of the bushes in front of a person then the screen would go black or a car would all of a sudden lift up into the air and come crashing down and there was the T-rex. The Lost World, on the other hand, made the Dinosaurs seem more realistic by showing them ripping apart humans, head butting trucks, and tearing up camps.

Action played a big role in the story line. Some of the stunts were more realistic than others. Say, for example, that you're hanging off of a cliff by a rope, but wait, it gets more complicated. You're also inside a RV/Computer Center, and it's about to tumble 150 feet into a turbulent ocean all while two angry Tyrannosaurus Rex's are ripping apart your buddy who's in his Mercedes trying to pull the RV/Computer Center away from the cliff. For one thing, anyone who sets up an operation like that next to a cliff is a complete idiot. Second, anyone who takes a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex back to their headquarters to fix it's broken leg deserves to be thrown off a cliff. Finally, the chances of the RV/Computer Center falling cleanly away from the people hanging from the rope on the inside is impossible; Anyone with half a brain knows that any object that falls does not stay straight, especially when ifs disproportionate in size and weight which I'm sure the RV/Computer Center was. In other words, if you were in the same situation you would not go straight through the door of the trailer and straight through the broken windshield of the truck because the difference of weight in one side or the other would cause the whole mass to roll to that particular side and thus the doorway and the windshield would not have aligned and you, my friend, would be a smear on the bottom of the ocean.

Most of the other stunts and action scenes were valid. I, for one, enjoyed the part where the raptors picked off the unknowing hunters who were running through the field. The scene with Sara and Malcom's daughter hiding in the shack was pretty cool too. The part where the raptor popped his head into the hole that the two were digging caught me off guard. The raptor scene also just about made me bust out laughing when Malcom's daughter unleashed her gymnastics moves on one of the raptors. Either that chick's got guts or a death wish. If that was me in the shack I would have soiled my pants much less touch one of those creatures. That was funny when all those little dinosaurs (I believe they were called compys) attacked the man who had shocked them.

The music is also a definite plus (I won't go into who conducted and composed it for fear of bias). Listening to the Lost World CD I find that the music stays true to the over all theme of the movie. I especially like the transition between Track 1 with it's happy, oh look at this beautiful hunk of island, and Track 2 with it's fearful, I'm catching the boat off this accursed island. I would have to say that of the 14 tracks number 4, The Hunt, and number 7, Rescuing Sara, are my favorites.

The one thing that plagued the movie itself was the lack of plot and motive. Sure it was fun watching all those neat dinosaurs eat people, but why are the people there in the first place. The movie never makes it clear. It's like Vietnam, all you hear is something about nobody believing that they exist. Then you load millions of dollars worth of high tech equipment and take it out to some third rate island where primitive creatures tear it up. So after all your high tech equipment gets torn up the primitive creatures then kill all of your party leaving you to go run to some thermoelectric radio where you get somebody to pull your butt out of there. What did you accomplish? Absolutely nothing.

The lack of plot weighs heavily on the entertainment value of the movie along with the fact that Grant (He Wasn't A Wussie Like Malcom) was so dishonorably discharged from the whole picture. Now I'm going to have to read the book. As we all know the movie always leaves out some of the best parts of the story. In Jurassic Park it was the Tyradactles those, those flying bird things you know, and the Tyrannosaurus Rex chasing the kids into the water fall. Hopefully I will find something intellectually redeeming, after all Michael Crichtori is a superb, if not the best, sci-fi writers of the 90's.