Wolff rating: NOT BAD
Plot summary: Our intrepid mathematician heads back to Costa Rica to find Site B, where apparently a large population of dinosaurs are still alive.
Biased, pithy comments: I'll start by saying it wasn't a great book. Then again, ``Jurassic Park'' was kind of a rough book, too, and Spielberg and his scriptwriters (in this case, David Koepp) went over it and made it into a passible, if not particularly memorable, series of pulse-pounding events. This time around, starting from worse material, they couldn't really seem to find any sort of thematic center. More problematic, my suspension of disbelief kept turning on and off as scenes varied from the downright terrifying, screamingly surprising, jokey, Indiana-Jones-esque comic action-y, silly, slow, and totally preposterous. It just seems like for that much cash you could bring together a much better and more exciting script; this seemed more like a ``Friday the 13th'' script, where bad guys (and semi-bad guys and a few good guys) get picked off one by one from the evil, stalking dinosaurs. Still, there are some wonderfully memorable moments, and the dinosaurs are really, really cool. Two or three scenes are worth the price of admission if you're a dino fan---the compys and some of the T-rex shots are absolutely stunning. So, really a mixed bag, and if it hadn't been for the special effects and the sheer terror of a few scenes, this wouldn't have been a very good movie. Your milage may vary, but I recommend not getting your hopes up if you see it.
Other Notes: Koepp, the screenwriter, is cast as ``Unlucky Bastard'' in the credits.
How many times I have seen it: x2
Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite, Arliss Howard, Vince Vaughn, Harvey Jason, Peter Stomare.
Directed by: Steven Spielberg