The 1999 TV series Walking with Dinosaurs paired computer generated dinosaurs with the aesthetics of a nature documentary. The stuff they covered in the show, though obviously not real, was treated with the gravity of a David Attenborough special. The straight-faced approach led to some truly fantastic education television. In translating the show to film, Walking with Dinosaurs 3D makes too many concessions based on silly conjecture on what kids are willing to watch. It pairs the nature documentary visuals with bad jokes, a stock story, and voices that don’t really add anything to the experience.
The film opens with a wholly unnecessary framing sequence. A pair of kids and their paleontologist uncle travel to Alaska to look for fossils. One of the kids, a teenage boy, isn’t interested in dinosaurs at all. While waiting for the others to get back, he runs into a bird (John Leguizamo) that tells him the story that took place in Cretaceous era. A pachyrhinosaur named Patchi (Justin Long) is the runt of the litter, and struggles to keep up with the rest of the herd as they make their yearly migration. But as he grows up, he’s forced to step up and find the courage within to keep his herd safe from dangerous predators.
The educational roots of the movie are still present. The film will occasionally pause to identify the dinosaurs on screen, and explain the etymology of their names. But the impulse to educate is overridden by the impulse to replicate the success of other animated features. The film doesn’t trust the entertainment value of the unique tone set by the television series, and augments it with elements of your average computer animated film. It sticks it with a stock narrative that finds a plucky protagonist learning to overcome his weaknesses so that he can be with a girl that he likes.
It’s an approach that feels pretty incompatible with the film’s serious, science-based visuals. It just feels odd when those cartoony voices are emerging from the dinosaurs, whose mouths aren’t even moving along with the words. And the story itself is terribly bland, following a tired template that doesn’t take full advantage of the movie’s more unique features. The rest of the film is filled in with a lot of clunky, juvenile humor that also feels out of place within the film’s aesthetic.
The humor, such as it is, is delivered through the film’s shrill vocal performances. Leading the herd in shrillness is John Leguizamo, who oversells every joke with exaggerated delivery. Whatever pertinent information the character actually has to relay is lost in the overly jokey delivery. As the voice of the main character, Justin Long is pretty nondescript, following the movie’s overall mandate to lose all of its distinction as it chases the impulse to be generic.
Walking with Dinosaurs 3D might have been a chance to expand the definition of children’s cinema. But the film doesn’t trust that kids have the attention span anymore to watch something that isn’t frantic and overly desperate to be funny. It is as if the film has already forgotten the success of its source material, a fairly serious TV series that probably inspired a whole generation of children to become interested in dinosaurs. This film seems unlikely to do the same, as it insists on being just another piece of disposable entertainment.
My Rating:
