Sci-Fi Channel's business model must have something going for it, since it's survived for years by broadcasting and sometimes even making these cheapie, careless fantasy rip-offs. How wrong can you go with one of the most proved premises of the 20th century: civilized people stranded in uncharted jungle where prehistoric creatures and savage tribesmen challenge their wits, their ingenuity & their very concept of civilization? "Lost World" answers that question with a bland script, weak acting, lame props & effects and characters dull enough to be animal feed--which many of them inevitably wind up as. An airliner crashes on the beach near the Amazon valley. The survivors--almost totally unhurt, at least at first--try to find the lost cockpit with its radio but soon encounter giant bugs, little dinosaurs and a single monster ape. Did I already use the term "rip-off?" A mysterious military officer (Boxleitner) with a pistol and a lunchbox is strangely uninterested in working with the others even though he appears to know much he isn't telling. The best feature, by far, is the presence of several female characters, mostly flight attendants & all clad in skirts & shorts that gradually get used up for bandages--the good ol' First Aid Striptease. If the women are rarely more than eye candy, the men are compelled to wrestle with the various technological & situational challenges that the storyline tosses at them--which they do less well than my friends & I did in first grade when we played in our backyards & argued about what was supposed to happen next. Factual mistakes & great leaps in scientific laws are presented so blandly that it's apparent even the cast & crew were bored. The props & effects in Sci-Fi Channel movies are usually somewhat erratic, but not here--they're just plain awful. The big ape is drawn so badly that he actually appears two-dimensional. A stunt man in an ape suit would have been better--yes, the cheap Toho monster movies of the 1960s have better effects than this CGI boo-boo. The best that can be said about this film, like most recent works of its genre, is that it's quite inoffensive except to the intelligence of its viewers and the memories of the artists & works it's plundering. The worst is that if it had dispensed with the wasted talents of star actors Boxleitner & Railsback (neither of whom has much of a role) and been made as a porno, it wouldn't have been any worse and might even have made more sense. Of course, it couldn't have been released to theaters or TV and therefore wouldn't have made as much money. And, after all, what is sci-fi fantasy really all about? Wait--don't answer that!