They don’t make ‘em like this any more, and thank God. The Lost World is the old- style Hollywood blockbuster in it’s dying throes, owing more to tedious picture- postcard safari epics like Mogambo than crowd pleasing monster pictures like King Kong. Almost nothing remains of Conan Doyle’s original text, and Irwin Allen, making a mercifully rare outing as writer- director, displays all of the pomp but none of the inventiveness he would later bring to his own personal genre, the disaster movie, in the early ‘70’s. Overall the feeling is one of extraordinary laziness, in the writing, the acting, the photography and most of all the ‘special’ effects; Allen’s choice to use real lizards in makeup as opposed to stop- motion or even puppets is a disastrous one- even the hokiest Ray Harryhausen creation is preferable to an iguana in a wig. Overall, it just makes you reflect on how much higher the quality of mainstream American entertainment is today- production-wise, there’s more care and attention lavished on even the trashiest low- rent modern blockbuster.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: BBC1
22 Feb 2006 4:53 AM | Submit Comment