Dino Disaster. Tyrannosaurus Wreck. These may be bad puns, but they perfectly describe the family adventure “Walking with Dinosaurs”, which left its mark as one of the worst movies of 2013. The BBC is behind “Walking with Dinosaurs”, which is loosely adapted from the network’s groundbreaking 1999 miniseries that also gave birth to a global sensation stage show. This film version has been dumbed-down significantly, to the elementary school crowd level, which was one of many bad decision by the producers.
Even before the first dino appears on screen there’s trouble brewing: A completely unnecessary five-minute, live-action intro features a teenage boy, his younger sister, and their paleontologist uncle (played by Karl Urban) in Alaska on a search for dinosaur bones. The boy is uninterested in the adventure until a talking bird arrives and begins to tell the tale that will become the story of the rest of the film. John Leguizamo does a restrained Sid the Sloth (without the speech impediment) as the voice Alex the bird, who also serves as the main narrator.
And even though Alex talks on screen (and in English) throughout the entire film, his lips never move. And it’s the same with the rest of the non-human characters. This will definitely confuse little ones and confound anyone else trying to make some sense of what’s going on. Alex, who apparently is ageless, then takes us back to the Jurassic period, where we meet young Patchi (voiced by Justin Long), the runt of a dino little who is the star of this story (and who sounds completely the same from the time he’s a baby till he becomes the leader of the herd. Along the way Patchi experiences life as a dino, which includes dealing with predators, long treks in harsh conditions, first love, competition (particularly with his egotistical brother), and, above it all, he learns how to deliver the corniest dialogue ever written for a major motion picture.
The biggest problem with “Walking with Dinosaurs” is that the people behind the film didn’t know what they wanted to make. This could have been a dramatic, intense, educational family film – a fictionalized version of the Disneynature documentaries (as the TV series was). Instead, we get a goofy, predictable
road trip comedy. The narration and endless, rapid-fire, dopey comments, consisting of phrases and references that even animated dinosaurs shouldn’t know about, is embarrassing. Plus, the 3D animation is nothing special and the storyline is as thin as the springtime ice that some of the dinosaurs fall though in the film’s big “dramatic” sequence.
“Walking with Dinosaurs” is rated PG for mild violence and rude humor. It bothered me that the term “Bite Me” is used in this kids’ movie, a sad example of just how desperate and off-target the writers were. As for parents stuck having to sit though this, their attention will be extinct about 10 minutes in. The narrow target audience of 8-10 year-olds who LOVE dinosaurs could learn a few names and some general concepts about this period in the history of the Earth, but that’s it. For everyone else, Yabba Dabba Don’t bother.
On The Official LCJ Report Card, “Walking with Dinosaurs” gets a D.