Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Walking With Dinosaurs: The Movie

This is topic Walking With Dinosaurs: The Movie in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 01-24-2014, 08:33 PM:

Inspired by the BBC TV "documentaries" comes the Kiddie friendly Walking With Dinosaurs: The Movie replete with talking sauropods and a boring, clichéd fictitious storyline.

The story begins in the present day with a rudimentary live-action set-up involving a disenfranchised teen who has grown out of his childhood interest in dinosaurs. On a day trip to the wilderness he's met by a talking crow who relays a prehistoric story from the Cretaceous period and, hey presto, by the end he's enthusiastic about dinosaurs again! Hooray!

The story proper follows Patchi, a young Pachyrhinosaurus (think Triceratops without horns), as he and his herd migrate for the winter and recount all the perils he encounters along the way, including having his parents killed, and getting lost and having to find his way back to the herd. Basically, it follows the plot of just about every kid's dinosaur movie since The Land Before Time and is consequently as dull as you'd expect.

The CGI is good, of course, but equally par for the course. And there is a great sequence where the herd is attacked by a Gorgosaurus (which all the kids will doubtless identify as the more glamourous T-Rex) which rates high on the thrill factor scale. Admirably the film attempts to educate it's young audience; as each new dinosaur hits the screen the film is freeze-framed while a child voice-over introduces the new beastie.

But overall, the film offers little we haven't seen on TV before for free.

4 out of 10