Review of Lost World, The: Jurassic Park

Introduction

As with Jurassic Park, you`ve all heard of the sequel The Lost World right ? As before - Spielberg, Dinosaurs, CGI ? As before - made an absolute fortune at the box office ? As before, a film released as a PG when it possibly shouldn`t have been ? Yeah, that`s the one.

As with Jurassic Park, this is probably what DVD was invented for, and it`s finally here in region two, currently only available as part of a box set with Jurassic Park. It should be released on its own later next year.

So are the film and disc as good as the first one ?

Video

As will the first film, there are loads of special effects, even more CGI dinosaurs, new models, and some more excellent locations. As Jurassic Park had such a good transfer, you`ll probably expecting another really good transfer to show all this off.

And as before, you will not be let down. It`s fantastic, in all its 1.85:1 anamorphic glory. Colours are great, contrast levels are excellent, and it`s another great example of cinema transferred to home cinema. It`s probably darker overall than the first film, but that`s due to a lot of scenes taking place at night.

Like I said about the first film, if you`ve only seen this at home on TV or on VHS before, then you`re really missing a lot.

Audio

With a big action film like this, you know that there`s going to be a lot of work for your speakers. The DD5.1 track is excellent, there`s plenty of bass (watch out for that T-Rex), loads of surround sounds (like trees swaying in the breeze) and another excellent John Williams soundtrack.

I`m probably sounding like a broken record, but as with the first film there is a dts version available in region one, and I get the feeling that it will have something extra to offer.

But I won`t moan because the DD5.1 track is excellent anyway !

Features

The biggest feature is again the 50 minute documentary. Unfortunately, this one`s not as good as the one on Jurassic Park, and there`s a lot less interesting background information on offer. It does feature brief interviews with some of the stars though, and clips of the deleted scenes.

Which you get to see again in full in the 2 deleted scenes, which are the next extra. These are not very good, and it`s easy to see why they were left out. Note the drop off in quality again, goes to show how much effort went into preparing the film for the disc.

You also get trailers for both films, and the utterly pointless trailer for JP 3 again (some trees rustling and some lightning). There are also storyboards, stills, more model shots, biographies and production notes. And there`s also the dinosaur encyclopaedia again, which is very informative, and might be a good bit of education if you`ve let the kids watch it.

I felt slightly let down by the quality of the extras here. It`s good to see some effort, but they`re not quite as good as the first film, and again, there`s no commentary.

Conclusion

This is another well constructed DVD. The film is quite different to the first one, but doesn`t quite hold together as well for 2 hours of entertainment.

There are even more plot holes here than in the first film, and it strays quite a bit from the original book. It`s not enough to put you off, as it still makes for an enjoyable evening`s viewing, but I`d pick the first film ahead of it.

Great video, great sound and a reasonable set of extras make this a good package overall. Recommended, but not quite as highly as the first one.