The Lost World: Jurassic Park

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about The Lost World: Jurassic Park's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of The Lost World: Jurassic Park completed by The Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) from a DVD on 27th July, 2011.

Overall comments and recommendations

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines.

ACCM review

This review of the movie The Lost World: Jurassic Park contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• themes
• use of violence
• material that may scare children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie's message

A synopsis of the story

The Lost World (1997), again directed by Steven Spielberg, continues the story of the first Jurassic Park film.  Following the failure of his Jurassic Park venture, billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has had a string of financial problems. Recently, his company was taken over by his unscrupulous nephew, Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard).  Now, Ludlow plans to turn around the company’s losses by establishing a new version of the extinct-species park in San Diego.  He intends to populate this tourist attraction with some of the stock remaining on the formerly secret dinosaur-cloning site, Isla Sorna.  To this end, Ludlow has employed a large group of renegade hunters such as Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite), Dieter Stark (Peter Stormare), and Ajay Sidhu (Harvey Jason) to track down, capture and transport dinosaurs such as the tyrannosaurus back to California.

Hammond seeks to circumvent Ludlow’s scheme by prematurely disclosing and publicising the existence of the secret dinosaur-breeding ground and its amazing creatures. With this in mind, Hammond sends a small team of experts to the island to document the species living there. This group includes photographer and environmentalist Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughan), field equipment expert, Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff), behavioural palaeontologist Dr. Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) and her somewhat estranged boyfriend, chaos mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum).  Following his almost fatal experiences at the first Jurassic Park, Malcolm is initially opposed to the plan.  However, he reluctantly agrees to become involved after learning that Harding has been recruited, and is already on the island.  Against his wishes, Malcolm’s daughter, Kelly (Vanessa Lee Chester) also travels to the island.

Themes

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Violence in the natural world;  family breakdown; human interference with nature.

Use of violence

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

aaa

Material that may scare children

Under eight

Children under eight are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations, the death of a parent or child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

aaa

Aged eight to thirteen

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

aaa

Over the age of thirteen

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

aaa

Product placement

None

Sexual references

None

Nudity and sexual activity

None

Use of substances

None

Coarse language

None

The movie's message

aaa