Teringer
An Exercise In Nonsense
CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Hattie
I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.
Animated Antic
There are some animated movies that have breathtaking animation and gorgeous backgrounds but everything else about the film is just awful that I feel that the film was a missed opportunity. Sadly, "Walking with Dinosaurs" is yet another one of those movies. This is a movie that has some fantastic visuals provided by the studio Animal Logic, but the story and the characters are absolutely atrocious that I certainly cannot recommend it. I'll get into why in a little bit, but here's what happens in this movie.After a pointless live action introduction with Karl Urban playing a paleontologist, we are told a tale about when a group of Pachyrhinosaurus dinosaurs living in the Cretaceous era migrate back in forth every winter through the Alaskan wilderness. In the film we focus on three young dinosaurs named Patchi, his brother Scowler and their friend Juniper along with a bird named Alex and how they go on a crazy journey including get lost in the wilderness and even having to watch their parents get killed by a Gorgosaurus. You may be now wondering why I haven't put in the voice actors yet and the reason why is because I don't consider them voice overs as much as inner thoughts from the characters provided by Justin Long, John Leguizamo, Tiya Sircar and Skyler Stone. The dinosaurs don't talk as their lips don't move yet we still hear their voices as if they're psychic. There's a huge reason why this doesn't work but I'm going to talk about the visuals first.The animation in this film is gorgeous. It has some fantastic live action backgrounds and the animation for the dinosaurs looked great as well. The dinosaurs are all impressively rendered and I was amazed at how well detailed they were. It's really a pristine movie to look at. Too bad there wasn't a mute button for this movie because I would have used it had I had the chance. The voice over work is so annoying and juvenile that it really sinks the movie. From what I've read, the film was supposed to be have no voice over work or narration at all and was supposed to be told visually yet the stupid executives at 20th Century Fox forced the director to include voice over work in order for the children in the audience to connect with the dinosaurs. That was a terrible move. By doing this, we have to listen to some awful juvenile humor read by actors from Fox's other family movies that it's difficult to relate to the characters and I honestly struggled to get through my viewing. One joke about how Alex and Patchi argue of how the dinosaur fell into the river and how the film actually rewinds to the same scene was so unfunny that I actually almost gave up watching the film. I'm not even kidding. This film is so unfunny and juvenile I nearly gave up. Even the educational element of this film falls flat. To teach kids about certain dinosaurs, the film pauses itself whenever a new dinosaur appears on screen and has a second grader read off the text information about the dinosaur. That also really annoyed me.Annoying is the best word to sum up "Walking with Dinosaurs". Despite it's breathtaking visuals, the voice overs added to the characters as well as the failed attempts to educate the audience failed spectacularly resulting in one of the most annoying animated movies I have ever seen. If I were to grade those two elements separately, I would give the visuals a perfect ten but everything else a one. Though in average, I think a two seems about right. Hopefully, there will be another edit of this movie to remove that juvenile audio because I certainly would want to see a more adult version of this movie. Until then, I'm sticking with "The Land Before Time".
feronique-35641
I couldn't give it a 1 out of 10, as the visuals are really OK. However, that would be about it. All the other elements were introduced just to ruin that movie. At one point I imagined it being a silent film with a couple of stoned jerks putting words in the characters' mouths as they went along and then it helped. Just assume everything apart from what you see is a bad joke and you will be fine. I mean, my nearly 3 year old didn't seem to mind too much, but I will not be showing it to my 5 year old, as I don't want to expose her developing brain to such rubbish. The dialogues are redundant, stupid, not funny and just badly written - and even more badly read. I didn't get the rules as to which creatures can speak in this film and why others can't. Having seen the original series really doesn't help - you just keep on wishing you were watching that instead. I think the creators should really be ashamed of themselves and I hope they learned something. How anyone in their right frame of mind can give it a 10 rating is absolutely beyond me.
Rebecca
I was very excited to see Walking with Dinosaurs, especially after seeing the trailer. I was extremely disappointed to discover that instead of watching the amazing animation, you spend the majority of the time trying to ignore the absolutely horrible voice-over. I understand the desire to make the movie more marketable to children, however, I believe that if the movie had been released as it was originally intended, without the ridiculous script, not only children but also teens and adults would have enjoyed the film. Kids are not dumb and very few actually need a narrated storyline to understand what is going on.
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.
