WALKING WITH DINOSAURS DVD (2013)

SYNOPSIS: For the first time in movie history, audiences will truly see and feel what it was like when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. WALKING WITH DINOSAURS: THE MOVIE is the ultimate immersive, big-screen, 3-D experience. Recent discoveries and a breakthrough in technology will introduce new and unique dinosaurs that are more real than ever before and put moviegoers in the middle of a thrilling prehistoric adventure, where an underdog dinosaur triumphs against all odds to become a hero for the ages.

MOVIE REVIEW:

Long before Fox turned BBC’s Walking With Dinosaurs documentary series into this CG animation feature, there’s already a Spielberg’s produced Land Before Time and the Disney’s produced CG animation, Dinosaur which is done in a way better manner if your son is a dinosaur fan.

Believing that it is the best way to connect with the audiences, Fox decides to add dialogue to the characters instead of a narrator which is what the original Walking With Dinosaurs series is all about. The worst thing of all, the dinos are not lip-synched to the voiceover actors. So basically you are watching an educational show about dinosaurs living in the Cretaceous period but with them talking modern slang American English and their mouth not moving. That’s kind of annoying.

Putting this main gripe aside and redundant bookend sequences which featured a Paleontologist (played by Karl Urban) and his nephew and niece, the actual movie tells the growing years of a Pachyrhinosaurus named Patchi (Justin Long) who witnessed the death of his father when he was little and subsequently learnt to become the leader of his herd. I heard you say the story reeks of Lion King and yes it’s undeniable there’s always recurring theme of family and love especially the latter. Well, Patchi is so obsessed with his dreamgirl Juniper (Tiya Sircar) that he forgotten his own father just died moments earlier protecting him and his brother. 

Unlike the classy BBC treatment, the movie is jam-packed with poop and cheap toilet humour courtesy of John Leguizamo as an Alexornis bird. There are no worries if you are stumbled by words such as Alexornis because Fox actually provides valuable information about all the different species’s eating habits etc onscreen. Remember this is an educational show about dinosaurs. To give the movie some credit, some of the breathtaking backgrounds are shot in New Zealand and Alaska. They are in fact real not computer generated.

Walking With Dinosaurs The Movie without a doubt appeals more to the younger children demographics. For the rest of the adults, we can look forward to the next Jurassic Park sequel to satisfy our dinosaurs craving or better still, get the original BBC series and watched them with your kids.   

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Extras include Dino Files which contains information on the various dinosaur speices and Match The Call Game where you need to identify different dinosaur calls. 

AUDIO/VISUAL:

Visual is often stunning and detailed. The audio quality never slackens and several moments feature immersive surround activity. 

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee