Walking with Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie, 2013.
Directed by Barry Cook and Neil Nightingale.
Starring Justin Long, Skylar Stone, Tiya Sircar, John Leguizamo, Charlie Rowe, Angourie Rice, and Karl Urban.
SYNOPSIS:
In this tale of prehistoric wonder we follow the life of Patchi and his herd through the years as they journey between warm climates. We see them deal with the dangers of the world around them as they fight for survival in the unforgiving world.
I have to preface this review by saying that I’m a huge fan of Dinosaurs. I was enraptured by them as a child, some of you may remember the series of Dinosaur magazines that were available in the early 90s, so anything with Dinosaurs is going to pique my interest. I thought the television show of Walking with Dinosaurs was excellent and I saw the arena show earlier this year and that was incredible too. So you can imagine that when I heard a film was coming out I was excited.
That feeling quickly faded.
My enthusiasm was first dampened by the frame story, which is about a palaeontologist (Urban) who takes his nephew (Rowe) and niece (Rice) on a dig, hoping to find the mouth that fits a tooth which he has already found. I have a lot of respect for Karl Urban but this segment feels like an infomercial for a museum. It was amateurish, cheap and sadly it set the tone for what was to follow.
The story is narrated mainly by a bird, Alexander (Leguizamo) and Patchi himself (Long). The other speaking characters are Scowler (Stone), who is Patchi’s brother and Juniper (Sircar), the love interest. This narration is inane, dull, annoying and renders the film virtually unwatchable. It’s not entertaining or informative and it doesn’t provide any insight to the animal’s behaviour. I was tempted to go and ask the projectionist if they could turn off the sound. What’s more is that it doesn’t even fit with the animation style since their mouths don’t move in sync with the voiceover, so they’re not actually shown to be speaking on screen.
When I first decided I wanted to become a writer I looked around for tips and helpful articles. No matter what I looked at there was always one constant piece of advice that was repeated from all sources – show, don’t tell. This film fails spectacularly to do so. This had the opportunity to let the story unfold naturally. This could have been a powerful film and it could have evoked a great deal of emotion, but instead it resorted to a dumbed-down voiceover that constantly jolted me out of the film. The story itself isn’t that great, but there are some dramatic moments, yet any impact they have is quickly drained away.
Another odd stylistic choice is that every time a new type of Dinosaur is shown, the film pauses and we hear a voiceover by a girl who tells us the name of the Dinosaur, what that name means and whether they were a herbivore, carnivore or omnivore. This is incredibly jarring and I can’t believe there wasn’t a smoother way to do this that wouldn’t have interrupted the natural flow of the film.
It’s very disappointing because this could have been something spectacular. The visuals were great; the film looked absolutely gorgeous. I liked the range of Dinosaurs they used because there were a lot of different types and there was a good variety of landscapes as well. The score was okay but I was expecting something more epic and grandiose. It was punctuated with some pop music which was of middling quality.
Some people may argue that I’m being too harsh and it’s just for kids, but there’s no excuse for the sheer inanity displayed here. Even if it was for kids I’d expect something intelligent that actually helped to inform them and spark their interest, this smacked of people talking down to children and not giving them any credit.
It pains me to say it but Walking with Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie fails on almost every level. I hope that if this comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray there’s an option to turn off the voiceovers because at the moment I can’t recommend it at all. I really wanted to be immersed but it felt like the movie was doing its best to stop me. I don’t know whose creative decision it was to include the voiceovers but it was an incredibly poor one and it completely destroyed this film.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Robert D. Spake – Find me on Facebook and Amazon.
Originally published December 22, 2013. Updated April 13, 2018.
