Steven Spielberg: The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Having filled my viewing gaps in Spielberg's filmography, the status of The Lost World: Jurassic Park as one of the director's weakest films, if not his worst film, has never been less in doubt. Other low points in the director's career have at least shown promise or intriguing premises: Hook may rely far too much on its regrettably hip version of the Lost Boys' hideout, but it sports two great performances and a high concept floated it through many of its glaring flaws. 1941 showed the director's first major, explicit attempt to revive the films of his youth for the modern multiplex, an approach that would soon bear fruit with the Indiana Jones franchise. Even the forgotten Always, with its too-broad combination of haunting movies A Matter of Life and Death and Only Angels Have Wings, had moments of beauty worthy of those wrenching melodramas.

In comparison, The Lost World seems such a cynical cash-in for Spielberg's biggest hit that hardly any visible reason exists as to why he would do it. It's not like the world's richest and most powerful director needed to do this to get approval for another film. His previous two films, the first Jurassic Park and Schindler's List, eradicated whatever sliver of doubt remained that Spielberg was King of Hollywood. The knowledge of the uselessness of the sequel makes its wretched, slapstick construction all the more grating.

The first major transition—is it trying to be a wry match cut? Because to designate it so—sets the whole tone for this film. Awkwardly cutting from a scene so stiff it defeats its own horror to Ian Malcolm on a subway, this poor segue demonstrates the total absence of the director's usual skill; I can't even bring myself to bring his grace into the equation.

Instantly, we get a sense of how simplistic the film will be. The first film certainly didn't display a richness of character and theme, but Malcolm goes from being a collected, smarmy scientist who knows that everything will fall apart to a panicky buffoon, a collection of tics and frantic sarcasm with even less personality than he had in the first film. And once again, he's the most complicated person in the movie; imagine how awful the others are, then.

Malcolm finds himself back in the thick of it with dinosaurs thanks to a series of developments made up out of whole cloth: as it turns out, InGen had a whole other island where they made the dinosaurs, and after a storm they just vacated the place and let the animals run free. 'K. John Hammond, reduced from a showman blind to consequences to an environmentalist…blind to consequences. He casually sends a team of researchers to head off the new board of directors from finding a way to exploit the dinosaurs, ignoring the obvious danger. The only reason Malcolm agrees to go to Site B is because Hammond convinced his girlfriend, Sarah (Julianne Moore) to go, which she does despite hearing Malcolm's tales of his time on Isla Nubar. If this film has any real commentary to impart on the human condition, it is in our ceaseless inability to respond to the statement "Don't do that" with "What, this?" We are a race of scab-pickers.

The convolutions, inconsistencies and outright retconning of this film pile on so fast that no remote connection to the story can ever take hold. The team arrives on the island and promptly set up camp at the edge of a cliff for no reason, and we soon learn that Malcolm's petulant daughter Kelly stowed away in the trailer. Soon, InGen forces arrive with the intent of capturing specimens and bringing them to a park being erected in San Diego, truly one of the stupidest ideas to ever test one's cynicism. Misanthrope that I am, not even I can comprehend anyone approving of such an outrageous idea after the pure catastrophe of the events at Isla Nubar—an island designed from the ground up to contain these creatures.

And then, Spielberg and writer David Koepp actually succeed in making the team sent to stop this madness from occurring worse than the ostensible bad guys. When the director lays a particularly maudlin track over shots of these mercenaries subduing genetically engineered beasts that should be firebombed for the safety of mankind, you know you're in for a tedious bit of moralism. As it turns out, one of the researchers, photographer Nick (Vince Vaughn), is an environmentalist saboteur who promptly releases the captured animals to wreak havoc on the InGen camp, destroying all equipment and stranding dozens of people on a deadly island. Later, when Nick makes the stupefyingly dumb decision to take a wounded baby T-Rex back to their trailer and the parents naturally follow, the "baddies" arrive and lend a helping hand and allow the four remaining members of Hammond's party to accompany them.

But it doesn't stop there! Nick continues to mess with the hired guns, stealing the shells out of the shotgun of Roland (Pete Postlethwaite), the hunter leading the InGen operation for the company's head, Ludlow (Arliss Howard). (It is yet another sign of lazy writing that an experienced professional like Roland wouldn't check his weapon before firing.) This is after Ludlow gives Nick coordinates to a radio station to call for help and largely lets bygones be bygones for being indirectly responsible for the deaths of many people.

Nothing in this movie makes sense. Why does Malcolm deliberately go out into a wild habitat looking as if he's going to stand in front of the nearest brick wall and tell jokes? Why can't the "heroes" put aside their superiority to work together to get as many people off the island alive as possible? Is the well-being of creatures whose existence poses a direct threat to the stability of the natural ecosystem more important than the lives of a people paid to come to an island, some of whom surely must have had no idea what they were getting into? How does the captured adult T-Rex kill everyone on-board the boat as it heads to San Diego yet leave the ship itself unscathed? And, again, WHY would you bring that goddamn baby rex back to your trailer? Kelly's presence is a nuisance and nothing more than a laughable play for easy audience tension (which fails, since the girl is so selfish and unlikeable) and a means to shoehorn in the director's absent parent theme, but even she's smart enough to see what a horrible idea this is.

Suspense is founded on some basic sense of logic. Though I've cooled on it since my childhood, the first Jurassic Park creates genuine suspense because the characters find themselves in plausible situations within the film's suspension of disbelief; here, everything is so blatantly staged that you just keep waiting for the obvious thing to go wrong instead of searching any corner guessing at where the next scare is coming.

Not that scares seem to be high up on the director's list of priorities here, though. Replacing the already thin characterizations of this franchise is a load of broad comedy completely incongruous with the film's haughty moralism and its fleeting attempts to feel darker than the first with the open antipathy of humans to animals compared to the snowblind optimism of Hammond's original enterprise. Goldblum does everything but break out the jazz hands in his hammy performance, and awkward one-liners dot the film. A brief line about Kelly being a gymnast comes into play late in the film with a run-in with a velociraptor that borders on the offensive in its howlingly bad staging.

By far the biggest flaw, however, is the total absence of magic and wonder, especially because the film still attempts to trade on the awe of the first film. Instead of scientists like Grant and Sattler being overwhelmed by the sight of dinosaurs and framing their discussions in moral terms, we get eggheaded chatter that sounds as if some of the actors were reading from an encyclopedia. When we first meet Sarah, she runs through dinosaur theory so rapidly and flatly you can almost see the off-screen lines reflected in Moore's eyes. One of the InGen crew, Burke, speaks solely in expository jargon about the dinosaurs, as if he's less a scientist than a tour guide in a museum. There's no insight, no discussion, only the relaying of facts in a desperate bid to suggest some kind of research went into this slapstick farce that ends with a rampage in San Diego so tacked-on it seems someone threw it in on a whim.

I typically don't jive with the Nostalgia Critic's brand of loud, cloying humor, but his video on The Lost World actually serves as a solid summary not only of the incessant plot holes and disregard for continuity but the laziness of execution. The only memorable shot in this film is of the raptors closing in on panicked humans running into a field of long grass, tails raised like shark fins, but Spielberg ruins even this moment by picking off the runners by having them slip out of view. It's a completely nonsensical method of raptor attack considering how tall they are. This is but one small example of the rampant incompetence and lack of care put into the film, a monumental step backward for Steven Spielberg. The only film in his canon I can think of to match it is the fourth Indiana Jones film, and at least the director tried to find a fresh angle for that film. The Lost World exists to educate what handful of people out there might have thought Jaws 2 could have been good if Spielberg directed it. A cash-in is a cash-in, and not even the finest populist director of his time could find any spark in this overwhelming redundancy.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

With the recent demise of At the Movies, various clips of classic arguments, pans and raves have received regular play on blogs. One of the most frequently cited, and truly one of the finest moments of the program, is the hilarious split between Siskel & Ebert for the abysmal early '90s comedy Cop and a Half. Siskel, essentially speaking for the nation, hated the film, and his open-faced astonishment at Ebert's thumbs up conveyed the collective reaction of the audience. Cop and a Half became an occasional reference point in the pair's arguments for the last five years of their partnership, possibly replacing Siskel's fondness for fat jokes when looking for an easy jab at his rival.

Yet Ebert's obstinate refusal to feel bad about liking the film, even years later, reveals something important about dumb comedies: if you laugh, you've got to give them a positive write-up. And, God help me, few contemporary screen comedians make me laugh as hard as Will Ferrell. Yes, dear reader, he does the same thing in every film, and at times his shtick wears dangerously thin, but when he works, he works brilliantly. There's something enticing about coiled-spring comedy, in which a mild-mannered individual calmly reacts to the world until suddenly exploding in pent-up rage. Some excel at this (John Cleese, Jason Lee), others simply come off as deranged (Adam Sandler, to a lesser extent Chris Farley). Ferrell is one who can manage it, presenting a thick-headed veneer of unflappable confidence and pride until someone finally points out what a fool he is, setting in motion the eruption.

With Ron Burgundy, Ferrell has a prime vehicle for communicating this talent. Set in the '70s, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy draws a broad caricature of a man with the intersecting lines of the "Me Generation" and the egotistical realm of the TV personality. Ron Burgundy doesn't do any reporting or fact-checking; furthermore, he seems barely literate, only just capable of reading what's placed on a teleprompter without ever stopping to make sure what is scrolling is correct or even logical. All he has going for him is a mustache made for television, and he acts like the arbiter of truth.

Anchorman, despite being set a decade later and being released four years earlier, almost seems like a preemptive parody of Mad Men: Ron, along with his chauvinist colleagues Champ (David Koechner), Brian (Paul Rudd) and functionally retarded Brick (Steve Carell), act remarkably like Don Draper and co. They drink in the office, act as if no law can bind them and hit on every woman in the office as if there solely as a sexual outlet. So self-absorbed are the men that, when the program's boss (Fred Willard) tells the gang that the network wants more "diversity" on the news staff, Ron believes that the word refers to "an old, old wooden ship from the Civil War era."

Casting Christina Applegate as Veronica, the ambitious reporter who benefits from this rearrangement, was a stroke of genius. Applegate's talents can be hit and miss, but when she's on, she can throw back anything chucked at her by a gaggle of male comedians, even when playing the stereotypically career-driven woman who just needs the love of a boorish man to set her on the "proper" life track of a woman. That aspect of the film is as much a joke as anything else, and it's nice that Applegate's most absurd moments involve her falling for an idiot like Ron instead of the film ever trying to sell this as a positive view of relationships.

There is an intense danger in attempting to tie higher aims to films with such Neanderthal premises, but this goofy vision of '70s local news has a smart side to it. Anchorman's placement as the first in the incomplete "Mediocre American Man" trilogy was fortuitously timed to the celebration of mediocrity and incompetence that defined the zeitgeist of the Bush administration, and Bush provided Ferrell with his biggest break on Saturday Night Live. Looking back, the endless jokes on Bush's stupidity that Ferrell conveyed during the 2000 campaign seem frothy and lightweight, little jabs thrown at a man with not much background to speak of even as the governor of a state. But jump forward eight years to Ferrell's taped one-man show, in which he trotted out the Bush character for one last run before sending him out to pasture (or behind a shed). You're Welcome America had the same focal point -- Bush's astonishing ignorance even after eight years on the job -- but what had once been cheeky now seemed vicious and outraged. No longer was Ferrell amused that a moron was running for high office; now he couldn't believe that the country had allowed such a man to run riot for nearly a decade. (In the final scene, Anchorman takes this one step further by saying that Brick would go on to be one of Bush's top advisers, an act that both homages Animal House and caters to this admittedly stretched view of the movie.)

This film, made in 2004, conveys some of that disgust, far removed as it is from politics. The outrage over a woman penetrating the homoerotic inner circle ("It is anchor-MAN, not anchor-LADY, and that is a scientific fact!" screams a belligerent Champ) shows men acting like children. Nearly all of the film's humor stems from jokes at Ron's expense, from his arrogance that is unjustified by either physical attractiveness or mental acuity to his dated belief in what's proper for women. Veronica fights to be seen as an equal, resenting the fluff pieces she gets assigned to by sexist bosses, but Ron's stories are no more important. Only Ron's gravitas makes his items seem vital, but he reports on water-skiing squirrels and the odd wild animal sighting. If this film comments on the pride Americans take in ignorance, then this angle can be seen as an attack on the vacuity of news programs and their perennial inability to cover relevant topics in favor of pandering to the broadest demographic for ratings. The Channel 4 news team thinks a panda giving birth is national news in the wake of Watergate, just as CNN now devotes increasingly less time to anything important and flounders about looking for some trite human-interest piece to save ratings. Hell, even the hysterical rivalry between news channels (other factions led by Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, even Tim Robbins) resembles the incessant pissing contest between 24-hour news channels, and Channel 4's pure arrogance and pride for their drivel matches Fox's own.

Oh, but why weigh down the film with such a reading when its enjoyment lies in its absurdity and its endless one-liners? Quite so, but I believe that Anchorman's cleverness runs deeper than its surface titters. Satire, it ain't, but out of all the pictures put out by Adam McKay and his various collaborators in the subset of the Apatow talent pool, this is by far the most fully realized and insanely re-watchable, precisely because there's some overarching plan to all of this. It may not be an expulsion of the filmmakers' political angst, but the derth of a point that makes Talladega Nights only intermittently entertaining is wholly absent here. Apart from an ending that must surely have come to the gang while under the influence of controlled substances, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy remains one of the funniest and best-cast comedies of the last decade, so funny that even a long-ass collection of outtakes could be haphazardly fashioned into a "sequel" that is also riotous. Maybe it can rise no higher than the status of "lazy Sunday" film, but aren't the movies just so much better when they bring you out of boredom anyway? Stay classy.