The Aisle Seat: The Lost Opportunity

I love escapist entertainment. I'm a big fan of genre films, and I'm usually able to forgive them when they happen to lack a certain deal of logic—provided they give us a good time, they have their heart in the right place, and the project is made with a relatively high degree of enthusiasm. And that, my dear readers, is the key difference between two recent genre films, THE FIFTH ELEMENT and the long-awaited sequel, THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, both of which have overtaken your local multiplexes on Memorial Day weekend '97.

Let's start with the Big One first, and I'll begin by saying that I enjoyed THE LOST WORLD to a certain degree. Some of the action set pieces are tremendously well filmed, and somewhere within this 135 minute epic is a really good movie. The problem is that, for the stunning second consecutive time, Steven Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp have yet to find it—LOST WORLD rambles through character after character without developing any of them, working through several potentially exciting story threads and abandoning the most interesting of them along the way. But more importantly, the sequel never really catches fire, and just sort of feels like "been there, done that" throughout (people may laugh, but I still say that a straightforward action movie with these effects would have worked better than a rehash of the scientists-trying-to-cope-with-dinosaurs scenario, which is unfortunately what is served up again here). Poor Jeff Goldblum looks confused as Ian Malcolm here, saddled with tedious one- liners that must have been improvised on the spot (witness his exchange with Richard Attenborough at the beginning—definitely doesn't feel like it was written that way to me). The other characters have little to do outside of running and screaming, and that's fine except that THE LOST WORLD could have been so much more. At one point during the middle of the film—the thrilling jungle chase, in fact—it seems as if Spielberg and Koepp are going to develop the most intriguing element in the plot (Pete Postelthwaite and his band of Big Game Hunters working for 1-D bad guy Arliss Howard) and turn the movie into a full-fledged action movie, but it doesn't happen. Instead, Postelthwaite is totally written out, along with Goldblum's mercenary ally Vince Vaughn, and we get a tired climax out of GORGO and GODZILLA that ought to be stunning and at least tongue in cheek, but instead it's really just a souped up CGI version of some bad old Toho movie. At no point during this film do we get the feeling that we're seeing something truly scary, exciting, or exhilarating, which even the original JURASSIC PARK was. Despite some miscasting and an equally superficial script, the original was truly an experience to watch—partially because of the digital effects, partially because Spielberg staged set pieces that are nothing short of masterful. There are no such moments to be found in THE LOST WORLD, which just tends to tire you out. I wasn't expecting JAWS here, but I really believed that Spielberg made this sequel himself because he was embarrassed at the poor character development in the original, and wanted to make a better story. So much for that. After all, what more is there to say about a movie that ends with Attenborough preaching about Mother Nature on CNN with Bernard Shaw?

I will add, however, that I loved John Williams's marvelous score, which offers some of the best pure action cues to be found in any kind of adventure flick this decade, at least. The primal percussion, backed by some blaring brass during the Raptor attack, is positively great, and the new theme that Williams composed is also a winner—it's like Williams's version of "Tarzan." What a pleasure to hear suspense music that actually creates and sustains tension by actually being music instead of droning synth junk that we get in movies like ANACONDA. It's one of Williams's best scores in several years (instantly making it preferable to any score written in 1996), and I'm willing to bet that several of his compositions on MCA's album were replaced in the movie (particularly in the later stages) by tracked material from his "Lost World" theme—but someone else will be able to double-check on that one for me.

And I know it's going to make some folks cringe, but I honestly had a more satisfying time at THE FIFTH ELEMENT, which offers plenty of visual imagination to go along with its Saturday Matinee style plot. I'm not a big fan of French filmmaker Luc Besson, but I got all caught up in this fun, fast, and always entertaining futuristic adventure, which never takes itself too seriously, and gives us a surprisingly low-key Bruce Willis and an athletic, kung-fu jumping Milla Jovovich. She's great, he's fun, and the movie has plenty of energy, the kind that seems to have been missing from Spielberg's dinosequel. As for the music, I thought that Eric Serra's score works fine in this context, believe it or not, and the sequence in which the squid woman (or whatever she is) sings Casta Diva while Milla serves up her Bruce Lee imitation is absolutely a knockout. I say check this out—and also be on the lookout for the gaffe where Ian Holm mistakenly calls the Willis character, Corbin Dallas, "Mr.Willis" by accident! Willis responds to Holm by saying, "it's Mr.Dallas," with a fairly large smirk on his face. Looks like they had a good time filming this one to me.

VIDEO: The best bet this week is SWINGERS (Miramax), the tale of one L.A. would-be comedian (RUDY'S Jon Favreau, who also wrote and co-produced) trying to get over his girlfriend and find the perfect girl. Unfortunately for him, his best buddy (LOST WORLD's wasted Vince Vaughn) tries all sorts of crazy antics to show him a good time, and some predictable but fun misadventures ensue. Needless to say, the dialogue here is the key, with some witty lines punctuated by well-drawn characters and good performances all around. Give it a try and let me know what you think.