The dinosaurs are excellent, the colours are vivid, there's more of a plot than in Spielberg's "Lost World", and the movie is faithful to Conan Doyle's intent, if not all his actual characters.
It's the faithfulness to intent that bothers me, for Conan Doyle was quite explicit in his (WARNING: SPOILERS START HERE) "science triumphs over creationism" views, using his fiction to postulate the existence of the 'missing link' that was then considered crucial to evolutionary theory. The BBC, in their wisdom, make this absolutely explicit by introducing a character who is a Christian fundamentalist, and is (therefore!) deranged to the point of being dangerous. As a Christian in the UK, I'm used to seeing the religious establishment portrayed on TV & in films as out-of-touch, feeble, compromised, or all three, but it does sometimes spoil my enjoyment of the show.
And the moral at the end of the film - i.e. primitive people & animals should be left alone to develop as nature intended (which does differ from the ending of the book) - manages to be both highly appropriate (in that living free is better than being part of a freak show for the civilised world) and also the standard justification for keeping missionaries out of underdeveloped areas, because the people there are clearly happier with their animistic beliefs, herbal medicines and subsistence economy than with Christian beliefs, modern medicines and money-earning jobs. Yeah, right. (END SPOILERS)
But then, it takes a well-written movie to be thought-provoking enough to inspire me to the length of spoiler/complaint I've written above. See it and decide for yourself.
It's the faithfulness to intent that bothers me, for Conan Doyle was quite explicit in his (WARNING: SPOILERS START HERE) "science triumphs over creationism" views, using his fiction to postulate the existence of the 'missing link' that was then considered crucial to evolutionary theory. The BBC, in their wisdom, make this absolutely explicit by introducing a character who is a Christian fundamentalist, and is (therefore!) deranged to the point of being dangerous. As a Christian in the UK, I'm used to seeing the religious establishment portrayed on TV & in films as out-of-touch, feeble, compromised, or all three, but it does sometimes spoil my enjoyment of the show.
And the moral at the end of the film - i.e. primitive people & animals should be left alone to develop as nature intended (which does differ from the ending of the book) - manages to be both highly appropriate (in that living free is better than being part of a freak show for the civilised world) and also the standard justification for keeping missionaries out of underdeveloped areas, because the people there are clearly happier with their animistic beliefs, herbal medicines and subsistence economy than with Christian beliefs, modern medicines and money-earning jobs. Yeah, right. (END SPOILERS)
But then, it takes a well-written movie to be thought-provoking enough to inspire me to the length of spoiler/complaint I've written above. See it and decide for yourself.