Figured we would eventually feature a dinosaur documentary film into Dino Dicember somewhat…. not yet, because we’re not talking about the BBC’s prolific and historically signifcant series of dinosaur documentaries, we’re talking about the movie based on those.
Which doesn’t mean much since i didn’t grow up seeing that BBC miniseries, quite odd given i was interested in dinosaurs as a boy, and you can bet by me making a recurring yearly rubric about the dinos, i still am.
Though doing some research on the BBC series made me wonder why the fuck was the point of making a movie when the series’ main appeal, one that would influence later prehistoric life documentaries, the idea of making a traditional nature documentary but using advanced state of the art CG to recreat the extinct creatures that once romped n stomped on planet Earth.
Exactly the kind of concept that really doesn’t need to have a plot attached, but i guess because any IP of some success has to have a movie, even just to remind people that the series still exist.
And to make some movie tie-in videogames, because dino moolah.
Speaking of which, it seems there is a recurring theme of dinosaur movies that were supposed to or could have been easily made as a purely visual and cinematic experience in this year’s last 12 Days Of Dino Dicember entries, without having to have dinosaurs talking through voice acting by some overpaid actor that might or might not know how to voice act.
Because this one was supposed to not have dialogues between the dinosaurs as “animated film about animals stupid dogma dictates”, heck, not even a narration, but – as with the already discussed first Dino King movie – voiceovers were eventually added to “make people connect better with the characters”, thank to the unsurprising decision of Fox executives.
Heck, if anything the narration would have made more sense here than in the first Dino King film, but nope, we gotta have John Leguizamo as a talking raven… which actually acts the story narrator, and theres is some interesting use of live-action to frame the plot, with a paleontologist bringing his nephews to a fossil hunt in Alaska, while their parent are having a vacation in Europe.
On the excavation site one of the nephews, once alone, finds a talking raven called Alex, whom transforms into one of his prehistoric ancestor, an Alexornis, and then tells the boy the story set in that very lake 70 millions year ago, about his old friend Patchi, and how he united all the tribes of Cain, marched against the King of Egypt before Moses uses his Beyblade to part the waters, in spite of his remissive nature and the literal hole in his head.
Or how he ripped off the Land Before Time and Disney’s Dinosaur, especially, because the plot really it’s so utterly generic and derivative i’m not gonna bother describing it, i’m so bored beyond belief even trying to spice up a synopsis. Which i technically already did.-
Also, i gotta point out how the nephew that has the epiphany of “Leguizamo raven” is the teen that doesn’t find dinosaurs cool anymore, pretending he’s over such infantile fancies, in a movie that also loves to insert modern pop songs into the soundtrack of the main dinosaur adventure portion, in case we haven’t “broadened the appeal” enough to the minimum comune denominator.
Just in case i’m not communicating properly how asinine this movie is, when the main character meets his love interest they play “joke stereotype porno music”. SIGH.
On the upside, the visuals are amazing, as the lineage and popularity of the Walking With Dinosaurs series might have led you to believe/expect, the CG is great and the animation is fluid, so i can’t really fault a movie like this for delivering the only real aspect were clearly all the work went and you’d expect it to go: spectacle. And boy it delivers on that front, make no mistake.
Just wish they didn’t scribble the more generic script and dialogues they could, almost amazing in how utterly generic and low brow they are, kids – mostly – deserve better than this pandering – if inoffensive – rushed throwaway material, but at least it’s a beatiful film to look at and it’s a relatively short sit, being 80 minutes plus almost 10 minutes of credits.
It’s just SO telling that in the one of the later Blu-Ray releases of the film they add the “Cretaceous Cut”, as in the movie but with all the dialogues removed, as many critics already pointed out loudly how that would actually make the film better, even more as the voiceovers were clearly slapped on late in production, since the lip-synching is often way off…. when there IS an attempt at synching, most of the time there’s not even that.
Not the worst thing ever, but indeed this is one where you can improve the experience by simply muting the TV and avoiding the voice acting all together.
Most likely it’s still better to see or revisit the documentary mini-series, just a hunch.
Wise Cafe (International) 