• Directed by Timothy Bond
• Written by Harry Alan Towers, based on the novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Starring
  • John Rhys-Davies
  • David Warner
  • Eric McCormack
  • Tamara Gorski

It’s probably been 15 years since I read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, and my memory has not remained undimmed. Here’s what I remember: there’s a plateau, the cranky and unrecognizedly-brilliant Professor Challenger leads an expedition, they find a world where dinosaurs still survive… And there’s a kick-ass scene at the end, the single image that stays with all readers and which ends every memorable film version.

This version does not end with that scene.

Eric McCormack (TV’s Will & Grace, Free Enterprise) is Canadian Edward Malone, a junior reporter for the London Telegraph. In a fit of bravado, he demands from his superiors some kind of dangerous assignment where he can prove himself. They send him to interview the notorious Professor Challenger (John Rhys-Davies). Despite the fact that Challenger has thrown 28 reporters out of his house to date (and knocks Edward down the stairs), he takes a shine to the young reporter’s candor, and shows him a sketchbook gained on his last African safari from another white explorer on his deathbed. It shows a huge cliffed plateau — and a pterodactyl. Challenger tells how he had planned to mount the plateau, but an injury gained from a devious and Portuguese porter prevented it last time. (Despite the PC permutations in the script, the Portuguese seem to get a uniformly bad rap throughout.)

Heartened by Edward’s respect, Challenger goes to the Zoological Society to pressure them to fund an expedition. His main foe is Professor Summerlee (David Warner), who has spent his life in comfort, building his reputation by tearing down Challenger’s. Basically calling him chicken, Challenger challenges (he does that a lot) Summerlee to lead an expedition to prove him wrong. What true Brit can ignore that kind of affront to his commanding Victorian manhood?

As I said, I don’t remember the original novel well, but I began at this point to have doubts that this version was 100% faithful. I rather doubt that the spunky young photographer girl (Tamara Gorski) managed to force her way onto the expedition by confronting period sexism in the novel; and I’d lay money that there wasn’t a stowaway kid who wanted adventure, and later proved handy. (At least he didn’t have an annoyingly cute pet/sidekick — leave that to some ill-conceived animated version).

And there’s no way in hell that Doyle had a African/Portuguese girl as a guide, lending tension to a slack love triangle between herself, photographer girl, and Edward. Interracial attraction is hard enough to get away with today, much less in the enlightened days of 1912.

The dinosaurs (when we FINALLY get to see them) are latex handpuppets, similar in quality to what you’d see in brief scenes in a Nova episode. Unfortunately, that means they basically have to be threatening from behind the bushes. The rest of the menace is supplied by the two African tribes living on the plateau, one worshipping the planteaters, the other the meateaters. But because this is a wiped-clean version, the script tries to veer away from both racism and dark violence, ending up with a completely inoffensive (and none too interesting) tableau. Imagine, say, a lesser episode of MacGyver, and you’ll be getting the picture. (A MacGyverism even makes its appearance — a makeshift hot air balloon, constructed from a handful of twigs and a jacket lining in less than two minutes.)

On top of the battles against period sexism, we also get PC additions in the form of respect for natives and native bearers; respect for animal life and the environment (including dismay at keeping animals in zoos, and a wholly un-British regret at having intruded on another culture’s world); and a non-resolution to the tepid romance.

And then the ending…

SPOILER ALERT (FOR THE NOVEL AS WELL AS THIS MOVIE)

In the novel, Challenger arrives back in England and gives a presentation in a great concert hall. The audience jeers at his assertions of prehistoric life, until he opens a great big crate and unleashes a full-grown pterodactyl, which frantically swoops over the audience, frightening the ladies, until finding the exit and disappearing out over the ocean.

In this movie, in the diminutive chambers of the Zoological Society (about the size of an upper-division chem class, plus a balcony), everone ridicules both Challenger and Summerlee, until the kid (remember?) steps forward with a basket containing the cute pterodactyl baby whose life they had saved on the plateau. Everyone cheers and shakes the professors’ hands, and feels driven to rub the cute ptero-tyke’s head. (Later the pterodactyl is put in a zoo, but Edward and the kid and the photographer girl feel sorry for it and free it when, you know, no one’s looking.)

Acting’s about what you would expect. Eric McCormack plays the same slightly-nebbish nice guy he usually plays. Rhys-Davies and Warner, two fine performers, go through on autopilot — Rhys-Davies in “bombastic” mode, Warner in “smugly British” mode. No one else manages to rise above the level of the safe-for-children script.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 8
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 2
  • John Rhys-Davies appeared as the holodeck version of Leonardi Da Vinci in a couple of episodes of Voyager
  • David Warner is probably the only actor who’s played a human (Ambassador St. John Talbot in Star Trek 5), a Klingon (Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek 6), and a Cardassian (Gul Madred, who tortured Picard in the TNG two-parter “Chain of Command”)
  • (and Eric McCormack starred in Free Enterprise, which was almost a Star Trek movie)