SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

MinistryofDoom My kids, like most young kids, absolutely love Dinosaurs. So as a parent, I thought what better way to have an educational yet entertaining family experience than to watch this together. Boy was I wrong. This movie, though it is inspired by the BBC mini-series, is terrible. Granted the stunning visuals and photo-realism of the dinosaurs was really impressing, that gloss was quickly overshadowed by horrible writing and even worse voice acting. The writing was absolutely abysmal and felt forced. The jokes were terrible, the narrator (the crow/chicken bird thing) was annoying and ruined the film with it's inability to shut up through most of the scenes. The banter between the dinosaur characters also felt forced and drawn out. Why do they need to have 20 minute conversations about absolutely nothing in most of the scenes? Did Larry David write this? Back to the voice acting. Oh my God, the voice acting was cringeworthy. The voice actors made no attempt whatsoever to play "characters" but sounded like they were just reading lines off of a piece of paper while constantly checking the time (they probably were). The dialogue and the movement of the Dinos' mouths didn't even correctly sync. Is this one of those things where we're imagining that they're talking? And just so you never fully feel like you're watching either a fictional film, or a documentary about Dinosaurs, every time a new dino is introduced on screen, we get a pause and their name written in bold across the screen as it's read aloud by a group of little kids off camera. This film was so bad that my kids who are obsessed with Dinosaurs begged me to turn it off and put on Pixar's The Good Dinosaur instead. Yes, it's that bad.

Incendid Jacob's Review: I am an enormous dinosaur fan and I share this fanatic behaviour with a close friend. When we heard news of a Walking with Dinosaurs movie, the child in me got excited. I was utterly obsessed with the television documentary and a film adaptation seemed like a good idea at the time. However, I didn't hear an abundance of positive descriptions about this movie. So when I entered the theatre I braced myself... We could not have made a greater mistake than paying $20 each to go see this movie. The animation was spectacular but that was the only truly great attribute. For years many directors have been attempting to tell a prehistoric story simply through visuals or narration and this film's trailers depicted it in that light. It turns out that as an after thought, voice overs were added and a prologue with some dweeb teen who hates dinosaurs. He is then confronted by a bird voiced by John Leguizamo who can communicate telepathically. The bird begins to tell a story about a herd of ancient behemoths and the journey of three lost Pachyrhinosaurs. The voice overs are atrocious and all they ever talk about is fart, vomit and poop. It is really distracting when something is supposed to be taken seriously but is juxtaposed with this immature attempt to be humorous. It was as if the producers thought that children's attention spans wont last long if there isn't lines like "get your butt out of my face". As a stroke of genius they put this in because that's all kids care about isn't it? Screw this film. This movie is annoying and weak. Don't feed this to children. 3/10

TheLittleSongbird It would have been a tall order for the movie to be as good as the ground-breaking TV series, which is still one of the most awe-inspiring series I've ever seen, and it shouldn't really be expected. Walking with Dinosaurs: The Movie(or Walking with Dinosaurs 3D as named on IMDb) isn't as good certainly, except this is not in a good way. And it's more that it's a very bad film on its own than being a disgrace to the series. The incidental score is dynamic and the gorgosaurus discussion is amusing, but the general consensus is that the best asset(for one the only good one) about Walking with Dinosaurs: The Movie is the animation. And I cannot disagree, it's nothing short of brilliant complete with some of the breath-taking scenery of any movie seen recently. Unfortunately it's a shame that the animation is as good as it is because it really deserved a much better movie, which has so many irritants that take away from what should have been better left as an experience. The story did have some relatable themes on paper that didn't come through on film, structurally it is very thin and formulaic. Which doesn't seem a bad thing as long as there was something engaging, which unfortunately here there isn't. There is far too much freeze-framing introducing characters which really interrupts the flow and is sometimes done for no reason and the book-ended live-action sequences are completely irrelevant. There was no need for the narration, voice-overs and dialogue, which were also very poorly done. Well actually, the movie would have benefited from a narrator, but this narration is way too over-used and doesn't educate at all, a lot feels like padding and some of it has nothing to do with what's happening. The voice acting only succeeds in making the characters sound and act dumb, with John Leguizamo at his most annoying and Justin Long voicing a character so blandly written you cannot engage with his plight. The script is similarly awful with over-reliance of "lowest common denominator" toilet humour that will insult anybody's intelligence, no matter whether they're an adult or child. While the incidental scoring is good, the High School Musical-ish pop songs feel ridiculously out of place. Because of all these irritants, any sense of wonder or naturalness is completely lost, and we also have a lack of danger, tension or excitement in the predatory parts that should have a sinister effect and emotional parts that feel shoe-horned in and manipulative. The characters are completely lacking in personality, with the predatory characters having no sense of threat thanks to the writing. There are some good messages here somewhat, but they are delivered heavy-handedly. In conclusion, it's a real shame at how much a disappointing and irritating mess Walking with Dinosaurs: The Movie was with the visuals being as brilliant as they were. 3/10 Bethany Cox

viceroy_88 Cannot compare this with the 1999 BBC documentary series, this is a family movie, or I can also say, a children movie.Made with mixture of real location filming and CGI, I think children who loves dinosaurs will like this movie.I was quite relieved that they didn't make the dinosaurs mouth move while they talk, I prefer it this way, when their mouths stay still when they talk to each other.Many people say that Hollywood ruins the awesome BBC documentary, but I'd say it's just another movie. And the BBC documentary is not so good anyway, in my opinion.So, enjoy watching with your children. But be careful, some parents might find the fight scenes too violent for children under 5 years old.