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Rating:  -
A very well made TV adaptation of Conan Doyle's 1912 classic. The plot (of the movie as well as the book) has Professor Challenger (Bob Hoskins) leading an expedition to an isolated region of the Amazon, where it is believed prehistoric creatures have survived. Conan Doyle had based his book on the travels to the isolated Roraima region (the border zone between Brazil, Venezuela and Guyana where flat top mountains named tepuis predominate) by explorer Everard Im Thurn. This miniseries was shot in New Zealand (standing in for the Amazon), and the movie deviates from the book in only a minor questions: having a female character in the expedition (played by the fine Irish actress Elaine Cassidy), and, more controversially, a different ending. But the movie is very well made, very exciting, as well as informative.
Rating:  -
Why I like this movie is the special effects did not
rob the story line or the great acting. This is a
3 hour movie on DVD and it is wonderful for the
whole family. The scenes are great. Character
development was will done. And I liked the ending.
I did not know this author (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
wrote something like this.
Rating: -
I have an incredibly low tolerance for Hollywood garbage, to the point where I barely watch movies at all anymore. The shallowness, the insults to intelligence, the stodgy reactionary attitude just makes me grind my teeth after a while.
That's why I was so pleased and surprised with this DVD. No insults to intelligence, no little-life-lessons, no cookbook resolutions. It even surprised me a few times with the occasional swerve. Where an American production would have slapped you over the head with a moral or wagged a patronizing finger in your face, this charming story just unfolded and allowed the viewer to enjoy the daring, occasionally crude, and sometimes poignant adventures of a rather motley group of people.
Everyone did a lovely job. I can't think of a single sour note. Buy this one if you want good, rollicking, attractive-looking fun without a condescending moral (or a cheap product placement)flapped at you.
Rating: -
I have just watched this on DVD and I can say this is one of the two best adaptations of "The Lost World ever" (The other good adaptation is the TV series as I wrote in my other review(s)). So what if there was a packaging and advertisement error, I did not let the fact that it was in full screen take away from the entertainment value. I love this movie because it is a classic. The extra features on the bonus disk are worth looking at as well. Like the TV series, it is closer to the book than any of the past versions. Be warned; do not let the fact that dinosaurs are in this movie make you think that this is a kid's story. There is minor profanity, mild language, tobaco + alcohol use, handgun use, many deaths, and considerably high blood and gore levels. In fact it borders on getting an R rating. All in all, buy this movie because it will definatley be worth your time.
P.S. If they ever relaese a true widescreen version (if that truly is how it was originaly filmed.)I will buy it so that I can have both versions.
Rating: -
It's London in the early 1900s, and Professor George Edward Challenger (played by Bob Hoskins), a crusty zoologist, has a chip on his shoulder. He feels he is missing the academic recognition he deserves. Which is understandable, for Professor Challenger has just discovered living, breathing dinosaurs--in the Amazon rain forest! Back home, he makes his announcement to the scientific community. But the news is met with derision and disbelief. So, humiliated, he embarks on another expedition, determined, this time, to return with irrefutable evidence of his find.
Accompanying him are his colleague and rival, Dr. Leo Summerlee (James Fox); a sturdy white hunter, Lord John Roxton (Tom Ward); and young Edward Malone (Matthew Rhys), a wet-behind-the-ears reporter on the Daily Gazette newspaper. (He's a bit of a milquetoast if you ask me). Soon after their arrival in the Amazon, the quartet picks up Agnes (Elaine Cassidy), the daughter of an English missionary, Theo Kerr (Peter Falk). She inevitable attracts the romantic attentions of Lord Roxton and Malone.
As one would expect, the group encounters a variety of dinosaurs: iguanadons, allosaurs, pterosaurs, and what looks like a brontosaurus. There's even a gigantic forest pig. They run into ape-men and Amazonian Indians between whom, the explorers find out to their cost, a bloody war has been raging. And, they must deal with Agnes's preacher father, whose madness threatens to jeopardise the expedition.
The special effects and animation, from the BBC series Walking With Dinosaurs, are top-rate. The ape-men, in particular, make it easy to imagine they are more than just actors in monkey suits and make-up. Very impressive.
The big-game hunter Lord Roxton is worth a special mention. He is by far my favorite character. What a rogue! Watching the swaggering, grim, mustachioed Lord Roxton on screen, it's hard not to chuckle as he flirts with the ladies, intimidates the natives with his shooting prowess, sneers at the weaklings around him, and blasts away at every living creature in sight. The scene where Lord Roxton takes his trusty elephant gun for a one-on-one with a marauding allosaur is arguably the film's high point. A classic aristocratic adventurer, Lord Roxton is the most appealing character here, possibly apart from Professor Challenger himself; he certainly turns out to be the wisest.
As a long-time fan of Kipling, Haggard, Buchan, and other imperial adventure writers, I'm giving this DVD a thumbs-up. This is a movie in the traditional mold, faithful to Conan Doyle's book, attentive to period detail, free of the ideological hang-ups that nowadays tend to mar otherwise sound films of this sort. Plus, like the recent Lord of the Rings trilogy, it was filmed in the beautiful land of New Zealand. But what more would you expect from a BBC production? A jolly good show.
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