Spielberg back in town with new monsters

By Dini S. Djalal

JAKARTA (JP): There's a great scene in Steven Spielberg's The Lost World where a sleazeball hunter gets chomped on by a swarm of sprightly critters. In this hopscotch of low-key vignettes, the pursuit of Safari Sam falters with comic stumbles.

Yet the menace is real, and when Big Man finally gets eaten by Little Creatures, audiences reel from a nostalgic sense of dread, disgust, and delight. That even the meanest mercenary will tremble if faced with fangs as wide as their Uzis is expected and unremarkable, but for a gun-toting trooper to crumble while fending off pint-size predators: now that's hairy.

And entertainment. The threat of the tiny-but-deadly has long been a surefire way of getting audiences into those theater seats, and then squirm in them for the next ninety minutes. Remember all those movies when the beasties (Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, 1984's Gremlins, killer bees in The Swarm, Joe Pesci in anything) were small but definitely scary?

Start getting sentimental because in this age of computer- generated-imagery (CGI), big is better. Hence this summer, fans of disaster films have the choice of big dinosaurs (The Lost World), big snakes (Anaconda), or big ships (The Titanic).

Big is better

The Lost World likely has the best chance of box office success, not least because its US$75 million budget is easier to recover than The Titanic's $200 million. The Lost World has a stiff precedent to match -- its elder Jurassic Park grossed US $ 916 million, second only to Star Wars as an all-time best-selling film -- but it also has Spielberg. And the director of E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a consummate storyteller whose films seduce audiences of all ages, race, and creed.

Spielberg packs his parables with a punch, but lately the jab is more nudge than knockout. Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), the special effects team which created Jurassic's dinosaurs, may have used its most high tech techniques, but the technology still seemed one dimensional -- much like the actors. And because the film relied on the dinosaurs' monstrosity rather than on clever chases, the film lacked a sneakiness requisite of true thrillers. Rather than being a visual and narrative achievement, Jurassic Park's main draw was the novelty of CGI and its don't-mess-with- Mother Nature premise.

After a three-year hiatus from directing, Spielberg is now new and improved, slightly. The Lost World upstages its predecessor in imagery and scare tactics -- but the acting, plot, script, and ruthless editing still has one clumsy foot stuck in prehistory.

Granted, 1993's Oscar-winning Schindler's List aside, coaxing fine-tuned performances has never been a Spielberg priority. He wants the spotlight on his film rather than on a few choice actors. Indeed, other than the Indiana Jones series which made Harrison Ford a supernova, the biggest selling point to Spielberg's films have been Spielberg himself. So if watching The Lost World you think "crap acting", don't blame the actors, they're just doing their job.

Jeff Goldblum is Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park's surviving scientist now arguing with dino-daddy John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) and his ruthless nephew, director of biogenetic farm InGen, Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard).

Soon, Goldblum is also arguing with his mischievous daughter (whose real name could not be included because Studio 21 blacked out the credits before the credits even began), and his paleontologist girlfriend Sarah (Julianne Moore). After some soul-searching -- Goldblum's good at that -- he's off to be a bad parent rather than a bad boyfriend.

Six-foot-four Goldblum is an odd hero. He may be the thinking woman's He-Man, saving the world from little green men (Independence Day) and big green beasts, but rarely does he lose his Californian cool, much less his shirt. Goldblum's best in sarcastic dialog, of which there's little here, and what few lines he mutters behind dark glasses are dire ("This isn't a research team anymore; it's a rescue operation").

The film's most embarrassing moment is also Goldblum's. At Site B, a Jurassic Park left wild with untamed dinosaurs on their way to Stateside zoos, Ian finds his kid onboard the van. This is after he and his teammates Nick (Vince Vaughn) and Eddie (Richard Schiff) have made the trip to South America, trekked through its primeval forests, and dissuaded earth-mother Sarah from adopting the dinos as pets. So Ian scolds his naughty kid. Hello, is this the plot-hole hot line? The kid went missing 10 hours ago in San Diego, and he's yelling at her for being stupid?

From this point on, there is little hope for either plot or performance clarity. Here the often excellent Moore (Short Cuts) does her best, injecting stock replies of "Oh No!" or "Oh God!" with as much spunk as stereotypically mandatory from fiery redheads, but the paltry script doesn't allow much else. Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father) hams it up as hunting- addicted Roland Tembo, but his best scenes are probably on the cutting room floor -- the character's transition from blood- hungry hunter to conservationist comes out of nowhere.

Many other things seem to be edited, although a segment which most deserved the axe -- the anticlimactic CNN-style ending -- was left to its self-righteous sermonizing. Sure, a reel- dispensing editor moves a movie at hypnotic pace, a necessity of adrenaline pictures, but The Lost World accelerates without pause or reflection. The theme of Man the Hunter becoming Man the Hunted is obvious, but not as coercive as it would be if Spielberg took the time to focus on character development.

What Spielberg focused on were the dinosaurs (much more interactive and believable this time, but still not as scary as the little critters preying in packs), the action (the best scene a virtual "cliffhanger", although having little to do with dinosaurs), and a lot of product placement (the press release came from sponsor Mercedes Benz, which takes center stage in key scenes). The sponsorship fits. The Lost World is ultimately a smooth ride guided by an expert race car driver, shooting off quickly past the vivid view which would have made the journey much more interesting.