Review of The Lost World

The Lost World (1999 TV Movie)
Let's make another dinosaur movie
4 April 1999
This movie was bad, and I was disappointed, because I enjoyed reading stories like this when I was a kid. The special effects were not good. True, there were no rubber models, but they were certainly not up to the standard set by "Jurassic Park." Watching a 4-ton T-rex leaping over a huge log at 20 mph without breaking both its legs will make anyone who has even read the current literature about dinosaurs blanch. And the current explanation of the fossil record holds that large sauropods (Brontosaurs, Brachiosaurs, eg) did not drag their tails. The Apemen were poorly done, to the point of being silly. I haven't seen such bad costumes/makeup since the old Saturday morning "Land of the Lost" series. Now to the characters. The story is a typical late Victorian adventure plot of adventurers wandering into an as-yet uncharted region of the world, where creatures from several different geological eras coexist. At the time it was written, it was cutting-edge adventure literature. But today, somehow, these stories all seem like "Land that Time Forgot" with Doug McClure. The actors were competent, even if their characters border on caricatures at times. The only thing that kept me watching was the actress playing Veronica, a young woman the explorers find living in the Lost World, in a setup that would make the Professor from "Gilligan's Island" drool. Of course, her parents were proper Victorian naturalists who took her along as a child but have since disappeared. She maintains their home as a research station, until they return. Why the daughter of British scientists had a modern California accent is not explained, but she displayed her obvious assets proudly throughout the movie. Hardly worth watching, except for laughs.
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