Amazon.com video review:
In the low tradition of knockoff horror flicks best seen (or
not seen) on a drive-in movie screen, Steven Spielberg's sequel to Jurassic Park is a
poorly conceived, ill-organized film that lacks story and logic.
Screenwriter David Koepp strings along a number of loose ideas while
Jeff Goldblum returns as Ian Malcolm, the quirky chaos theoretician
who now reluctantly agrees to go to another island where cloned
dinosaurs are roaming freely. Along with his girlfriend (Julianne
Moore) and daughter, Malcolm has to deal with hunters,
environmentalists, and corporate swine who stupidly bring back a big
dino to Southern California, where it runs amok, of course. Spielberg
doesn't seem to care that the pieces of this project don't add up to a
real movie, so he hams it up with big, scary moments (with none of the
artfulness of those in Jurassic Park) and smart-aleck visual
gags (a yapping dog in a suburb mysteriously disappears when a hungry
T-rex stomps by). A complete bust. --Tom Keogh
Amazon.com video review:
After the global phenomenon that was Jurassic Park, it
was a given that novelist Michael Crichton would conjure up a sequel
and that Steven Spielberg would then commit it to film. Considering
the potential profit involved, it was practically a commercial
mandate. Perhaps it was inevitable that both efforts were contrived,
and well below the talents of Crichton (well, maybe) and certainly
Spielberg, who just didn't have the heart for this recycling after the
artistic triumph of Schindler's
List. What we're left with, for better and worse, is a
redundant blockbuster that still benefits from Spielberg's mastery of
high-intensity action sequences and the further development of amazing
computer-generated special effects. What's missing is the awe and
wonder that made Jurassic Park a technical marvel and a
dazzling product of scientific imagination. The story's a no-brainer:
after the deadly fiasco of the original dinosaur theme park, we're
taken (along with returning star Jeff Goldblum) to a second island
where genetically engineered dinosaurs still thrive under the watchful
eye of Goldblum's biologist girlfriend (Julianne Moore). But a devious
capitalist (Arliss Howard) is determined to export dinosaurs to a new
park in San Diego, financing a hunt-and-capture expedition that
results in another series of fatal disasters. In Spielberg's hands
this movie's more exciting than it has a right to be, given the
creative paucity of Crichton's novel and David Koepp's adapted
screenplay. The special effects are state-of-the-art, and the T-Rex's
rampage through the streets of San Diego is nothing short of
spectacular; but apparently an improvement upon the shortcomings of
Jurassic Park was too much to hope for. --Jeff Shannon
