If you happen to be one of the 12 people on Earth who didn’t see Jurassic Park, here’s a brief recap. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), really rich corporate tycoon guy, gets the brilliant idea to clone dinosaurs from blood found in fossilized mosquitoes and decides to open an island theme park. To test said theme park, he hires a group of consultants -- one of them being chaos mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) -- to witness it in all its splendor. Stuff goes very wrong. Dr. Malcolm and four others barely escape from the island with their lives.

It’s four years later and Hammond is organizing another expedition, but to a different island, Isla Sorna, otherwise known as Site B. That’s where they actually made the dinosaurs, and then shipped them over to Isla Nublar, the site of the theme park. Malcolm agrees to go on this second dino-expedition only because his girlfriend, Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) is already on Isla Sorna, and he wants to rescue her from the inevitable carnage.

Leading Man: T. Rex Harrison

For all intents and purposes, The Lost World is almost the exact same movie as Jurassic Park (pack of people must survive dino attacks and get off island)... except for one, very important thing: a sense of wonder.

Jurassic Park wasn’t really a very good movie at all. The plotting was clunky and the characters were right out of the card catalog, but when we first saw those dinosaurs -- moving, breathing, eating -- it touched some childhood fantasy within all of us. For the first time, someone had managed to put dinosaurs on screen the way they really must have been, and we ate it up. Spielberg had given us sheer spectacle, and we forgave him for the rest of the film’s flaws. But that was four years ago.

Now, the awe has vanished only to be replaced with a "we’ve seen all this before" blasé. Yes, the dinosaurs in The Lost World are impressive. Yes, there are more of them. Yes, they do things that they couldn't do in the first film, thanks to technological refinement. But nothing is going to make us gape slack-jawed at film dinosaurs again.

To his credit, Spielberg does an admirable job with the vapid David Koepp script (loosely based on Michael Crichton’s novel). Spielberg is still one of Hollywood’s greatest directors and anything he does is always fun to watch, but as the film goes on you can almost sense him struggling to overcome the lack of character and story in The Lost World’s script.

He can still make you grip the edge of your seat in anxiety, or make you jump in your seat like no other director can. The Lost World proceeds at a pretty fast pace until two-thirds of the way through, when the action slows to a grind as the locale shifts from Isla Sorna to downtown San Diego. While it’s fun to see a T. rex storm down suburban streets, gulping down civilians on its way, it did more to whet my appetite for next summer’s Godzilla than to thrill me at the finale.

Goldblum -- on his way to starring in the three highest grossing films in history (Jurassic Park, Independence Day, and now The Lost World) -- brings his usual off-kilter magnetism to the role of Ian Malcolm. Moore does a fine job as the underwritten tough female sidekick and Pete Postlethwaite adds some Shakespearean aplomb to this film's version of the Great White Hunter.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park is fun, but not great, and if Spielberg weren’t obviously having fun at the helm, this would be a bore. But as it is, you’ll get your eight bucks worth.