The Lost World: Jurassic Park (iRiffs)

Film Year:  1997
Genre:  Science Fiction, Adventure, Thriller
Director:  Steven Spielberg
Starring:  Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn, Pete Postlethwaite, Vanessa Lee Chester, Arliss Howard, Peter Stormare, Richard Schiff, Richard Attenborough
Riffers:  Mocktails (Scott, Joe, Chuck).

The Movie

Initially Michael Crichton didn't have plans to write a sequel novel to one of his most popular bestsellers, Jurassic Park.  It wasn't until after the massive box office of the film adaptation and personal pressure by Steven Spielberg did he reconsider.  He then came up with the innovative idea for a sequel book where "Hey, there's an island with dinosaurs on it.  Let's go BACK to it!"  Despite Spielberg's insistence that Crichton develop his own sequel to his book, I always found it a little funny that Spielberg wound up throwing much of it out anyway.

In a storyline that is more or less kinda what happens in the book, just told in a different way, The Lost World:  Jurassic Park finds Ian Malcolm, the one character from the original least likely to wind up back with the dinos, back with the dinos.  But this isn't the same island from the first book but rather a free range breeding island that was part of the same island chain, despite the fact we saw the dinosaurs being bred in the original on the first island.  Confused yet?  Anyway since the dinosaurs were genetically designed to die without human interaction, Malcolm is sent with a team to observe the dinosaurs on this island to find out why they're still alive.  Meanwhile another team is sent to capture dinosaurs and to bring them to the mainland in an ill-advised attempt to rebuild Jurassic Park on the mainland.

I remember being a kid at school when somebody made the remark that the original Jurassic Park was way better because it had a story while The Lost World was just a monster movie.  I didn't see his point.  Still don't.  I grew up loving monster movies, so the fact that a movie is just a monster movie doesn't phase me.  Is the movie redundant?  Sure.  But it's well made, and has some brilliant sequences of suspense that equal some of the best sequences in the original.

The dinos look even more impressive here than they did in the first, with just as much showstopping animatronic work coupled with more confident CGI.  I always get a kick out of The Lost World when I watch it, so I've never much understood the criticism leveled at it.  It's not an innovative film by any means, but as far as dinosaur adventures go it's ahead of the pack.

The Riff

Reviewing fan riffs is going to be a tricky business, and often I find myself thinking long and hard about whether or not this is a road I want to embark upon.  Especially while I'm watching them.  In the case of this riff I desired to do a Jurassic Park marathon in anticipation of the release of Jurassic World:  Fallen Kingdom, but I lacked a riff of The Lost World to do a full series.  Another riff group, Quiptracks, released one a while back but for whatever reason it's no longer available.  Instead I had to make due with a group called Mocktails, who as far as I can tell have only released this one riff.  Dropping a fan-made riff in the middle of a Rifftrax marathon is tricky enough, but do I want to judge a one time hit-and-run riff?  Is that a can of worms I want to open?

But I don't want to condemn something without having viewed it.  So here we are with the Mocktails riff of The Lost World:  Jurassic Park.

The thing I found myself most curious about as I watched this riff is what their script editing process was.  The flaw that I feel comes up the most in this iRiff is that I found it very cumbersome.  The group throws out a large amount of jokes at the film, but more of them feel like they're going for quantity over quality.  They speak because they feel as if seeing which portion of the volume they're throwing out sticks to the wall.  I really want to know how many versions of the script they come up with, if there were any jokes they threw out, or if they just put together a draft without a real filter for what works and what doesn't.

The uncertainty of the riff comes from a variety of places.  There are way too many jokes that feel safe and bare minimum, while others don't quite match up to the scene and give off a joke that's a huge stretch.  The worst offender in the latter subject comes early on as they riff a bed-ridden Richard Attenborough when one of the riffers lays down "Enthusiasm or Parkinsons?  You decide."  I just sat there flabbergasted at this riff.  First, Attenborough didn't do anything to set it up, and it was delivered as if it were a misplaced attempt at shock humor.  I was less shocked by the poor taste than I was that they had completely misjudged the context.  If the rest of the experience continued like that it would have been a Titanic level disaster.

But when the film delivers some dinosaur action the riffers are more likely to deliver something funnier.  Probably the moment that made me laugh the most comes early on when Richard Schiff sees a Stegosaur for the first time:  "Stegosaurus fetish comes to a climax!"  This is incredibly well played, because the visual on the screen supports the joke they're making.  Unfortunately moments like these are few and far between, and the riffers more or less just feel like they just threw most of it together.

And that's just the technical details.  Truth be told their delivery is underwhelming and not very enthusiastic.  The trio needs to emote with their voices more, and maybe a greater push will make their lines funnier.

Halfway through the riff they try to knock Family Guy for just referencing random pop culture moments and pretending it's clever and funny doing so.  Maybe this joke would have been funnier if that wasn't the impression I had of this riff as a whole.  There are a lot of jokes that are just said so they can exist, and there never feels like there's a particular vision for this riff.  The movie feels like it was selected simply because they didn't like it as opposed to them weeding out potential as to what they could do with it.  This is probably the biggest mistake a first time riff group can make, because you need to pick an easy target for your amateur status to learn from as opposed to a lengthy, mediocre film you dislike that could take you down with it.  There are a few occasional glimpses of a diamond in the rough for the Mocktails group, but there is a huge refinement process that needs to be put into effect if they really wanted to continue this.

Not Recommended