Jeff Goldblum: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

And 5 That Sucked...

5. Dr Ian Malcolm - The Lost World (1997)

Despite all the cool, nerdiness that Jurassic Park had introduced for Dr Ian Malcolm, the sequel reimagined him as a typical, paint by numbers action movie Dad with emotional baggage, a personal vendetta and way too much confidence in the field. Gone was the swaggering lie of the mathematician who used tricks to seduce women, replaced by a stern bad-!*$% who would run towards dinosaurs to save friends and family.

While the idea of a Die Hard-style Jeff Goldblum isn't entirely a bad idea, it simply doesn't for what came before. It is an absolute betrayal of the character, who loses his essential Goldblum-ness (aside from the excellent "...but then there's running and screaming" line), and it no longer feels like his performance.

It's almost like the writers wanted Alan Grant but simply had to compromise and accept Malcolm at the last minute, changing the names but not writing it any differently.