The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Despite the tighter script, this sequel suffers by provoking a sense of déjà vu: crucially, our wonder at the dinosaurs - the first film's trump card - is severely diminished second time around, while the suspense set-pieces are simply more of the same. Story and characterisation, such as they are, are contrived; it now turns out there's a second secret island populated by the beasts, which Goldblum reluctantly visits with a 'good' research expedition, while Postlethwaite leads a 'bad' team of hunters hired to transport them to a San Diego theme park. There's much hiding from T Rexes on the rampage after the baddies have messed with their young; indeed, there's much stuff about parenting, too, with Goldblum now lumbered with an (inexplicably black) daughter - presumably an identification figure for younger viewers, who may find some of the nastier attacks (men torn in two, faces bitten by initially sweet-seeming mini-monsters) hard to take. And the eco message is pap, an excuse for a climactic scene of a T Rex terrorising the LA suburbs (when, oddly, the model work is most conspicuous and unreal). In short, what you'd expect, and no more.