The Lost World (1998)

i must have seen a different film!!

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I'm not sure what the folks in charge of making this film were thinking. It's like they thought they should make a film based on the novel aimed more at adults, but then with most punches pulled, and with horrible (and I mean horrible) CGI thrown in for good measure.You know the drill, scientist finds dinosaurs, sets out to prove it's true, yadda yadda natives, dinosaurs, lucky escape etc. Due to this film being made in the nineties, there's a strong environmental message about killing the land left by a native Al Gore.There's a bit of gore here and there, but I can't help but feel there should have a been a bit more of the red stuff and bit less of people having punch ups and travelling (so much travelling).Not the worst film ever, but nowhere near any good either.

When you see the title of a movie adaptation of a novel that has the novelist's name in the title, don't assume that means a faithful adaptation, cases in point Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein etc. But perhaps the best example yet of that caveat is this movie, where while Challenger (in the movie beardless) and Summerlee (in the movie elderly) are scientists, that's about the only holdover from the book. Roxton is not a lord, not even British but American, and the screenwriters got the bright idea of turning him into a villain! Other commentators have pointed out that the title place is set in 1930s Mongolia rather than 1910s South America and that the dinosaurs aren't accurate (at least they aren't monitor lizards and caimans), but what they've neglected to mention is that this is not really an adventure but a disaster movie. Why? The plot follows the latter's standard procedure of knocking off the cast one by one in various gruesome, even sadistic ways (the first victim dies in part because of his own and the others' stupidity), but you'll likely guess who survives. Finally, the movie breaks with a plot element in the ending of every other Lost World adaptation that has ever been made, though considering what's happened up to that point, it's about the only logical plot development in this turkey. Beware!

My Take: Decent, violent and rarely-seen adaptation. I do have the book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but I haven't read it yet. I was only familiar with the characters in Doyle's tale when I watched this movie many years ago, when I was a kid. I really loved it as a kid, because I loved Dinosaurs that much back then. I watched this movie a lot of times. There were a lot of reruns of this movie back then. Sure, it was not "Jurassic Park", but I still loved it.I know many of you are confused due to the numerous remakes of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic story in the 90's, that you mistake this movie from something else. As for me, I only know two "Lost World" movies. This and Steven Spielberg's hit sequel to "Jurassic Park". Both are good films. Even though the film delivers a lot of flaws and errors in paleontology or in the novel, I'm still looking forward on watching it again. I've forgotten a lot about it when I last watched it as a kid. So I'm looking forward for another rerun, or better yet, a video copy of my own.TV movie rating: *** out of 5.

A very predictable plot that has its hero, heroine and villains. So So effects with a predictable outcome. Only 4 out of 10...