WALKING WITH DINOSAURS
PG
87 Minutes
Directors: Barry Cook, Neil Nightingale
Writer: John Collee
Charlie Rowe, Karl Urban, Angourie Rice
CAST
Charlie Rowe…Ricky (voice)
Karl Urban…Uncle Zack (voice)
Angourie Rice…Jade (voice)
John Leguizamo…Alex (voice)
Justin Long…Patchi (voice)
Hey thank you, I’ma make you lunch, thank you. Okay, now put your claws together for James Bronnnnnntosaurus!
[James Brown style]
Pum pum pum, I eat wood, dada dada dada da, it tastes good, dada dada dada da no meat, big feet, I eat wood, pum pum pum!
-Robin Williams, MRS DOUBTFIRE (1993)
LOOK WHO’S TALKING NOW
WALKING WITH THE DINOSAURS is a CGI family movie. It’s about ‘Patchi’, a dinosaur who wants to lead a pack of dinosaurs someday.
The premise starts with a family going on a road trip, to do some dinosaur hunting. I mean dinosaur bone hunting. Inexplicably, a bird starts narrating the movie. He lives in the present, but he also existed 67 million years ago. So he can tell you what went on with the dinosaurs. Eventually, you forget about the humans from the beginning of the movie, but they show up at the end.
Remember the part of MRS DOUBTFIRE, where Robin Williams is messing around with those toy dinosaurs . WALKING WITH DINOSAURS is 87 minutes of that: pure annoying-ness. Even your kids will find this boring. They should only watch this as punishment for something bad. Like killing a family pet or downloading movies off the internet.
In WALKING WITH THE DINOSAURS, when the dinosaurs speak, the words don’t sync with their mouth movements. It feels like people are just talking in the background: like MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER, without the humor. Or maybe dinosaurs communicate telepathically. I don't know for sure. Not that syncing the dialogue would make this picture any better. Because this film’s main issue is the dialogue itself: it isn’t very good.
There are many science lessons interspersed through out the film. We learn the names of some dinosaurs. I don’t remember what those names were. But we learned them nonetheless. I also remember that some of the dinosaurs had feathers. I admire how the film strives for scientific accuracy. It’s worth noting that JURASSIC PARK 4 won’t have any feathered creatures. But I don’t mind; feathered dinosaurs don’t look cool.
Dinosaurs are one of my favorite things. And it upsets me to see them desecrated like this. It’s incredibly difficult to screw up dinosaurs. Even that purple dinosaur is ‘super dee-duper’ in small doses. I don’t know about his friends though.
WALKING WITH DINOSAURS sounds a lot like WALKING WITH THE DINOSAURS, an excellent Discovery Channel series. So like an asteroid, the only way you’re going to encounter this piece of interstellar garbage is by accident.
Final Verdict: 6 out of 100
