Movie review: Visual feast but no new flavor in ‘Walking with Dinosaurs 3-D’

As the title suggests, the main draw of “Walking with Dinosaurs 3-D” is in the visuals rendered via 3-D. Yes, there’s a lot of walking dinosaurs (the story concerns itself with the regular migration taken by a specific pack of dinos) and they are shown in glorious 3-D. There’s good detail on the dinosaurs and the expected scenes where things seemingly pop out and go at the audience. In those respects it delivers.

What the film really wants to be, though, isn’t very clear. I really thought that this might be the kind of thing that would screen at museums. The way it introduces various kinds of dinosaurs makes it feel more instructional tool than feature film. And if I got a lot of these scenes and sequences while I was at a museum screening or walking through exhibits, I would be very impressed.

But the way it was presented to us here—as a feature film—as well as asking us to pay those kinds of prices, makes it hard to accept the film as it is. The thing is that whenever faced with a dinosaur movie for kids, I find myself flashing back to “The Land Before Time” and the emotional resonance that that movie had. “Walking with Dinosaurs”’s images are obviously far superior, but the story lacks heart and falls into all too familiar Hollywood kiddie movie tropes.

We start off with a couple of kids, an eager grade-schooler and a skulking teen, as they are brought by their paleontologist uncle to a dig site. Of course the teen is wearing a hoodie and angsting over having to be out there. Then we jump from his perspective to the past, where we get the narration from Pachy, the main dinosaur, voiced by a heavily Latino-accented John Leguizamo.

Here, the beats are all too familiar. He’s the runt of the pack, but there’s something about him that makes him different and special. His father is the alpha of the herd, but then something traumatic happens. He’s got a bully of an older brother that he’s dealing with throughout his life. And the most frustrating of Hollywood conventions, the necessary love story.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good romance. But the thing is that each and every Hollywood film seems to have a romance shoehorned in. And I don’t understand it, especially in children’s movies—sure, some kids’ movies have great romantic stories, but some don’t. So the insistence on it is very problematic; this is felt even more when you watch the mating rituals and the power struggles of these dinosaurs, and see how the film sidesteps the reality of those in favor of the love story.

Despite all those things that trouble me, as an adult viewer, I must say that if I were the target audience, then I would love this film. If I were six years old and I loved dinosaurs and poop jokes, this might very well become my favorite movie.

The action here gets pretty intense. There’s no blood, but the film doesn’t hold back on the darkness of death among animals and the ruthlessness with which carnivores or scavengers attack their enemies. There are many sights to behold: gorgeous landscapes, animals in flight, breathtaking camera movements as we follow a herd being attacked by a pack of carnivores.

When it comes to building suspense and ratcheting up the conflict on specific action sequences, the film does a great job. Even if you aren’t particularly invested in the overarching story, the individual action scenes are exciting and demand attention.

The thing with this film’s humor is that it’s very juvenile. Sure, this movie is meant for kids, but then this is where we can separate films that pander to kids, and the superior children’s movie, which offers humor that can appeal to a larger audience. I understand that the target audience is very young children, but I do think that more could have been done than poop jokes and self-referential stuff. There’s a funny moment with the tiny arms that some carnivorous dinos have, but that’s pretty much the extent of the humor that elevates above toilet humor and sight gags.

“Walking with Dinosaurs 3-D” is decidedly a children’s movie, and one for very young children. Its story holds little draw, except for maybe people who haven’t seen very many stories. The visuals make some of it worth watching, but slogging through a whole screening will most likely be a chore. If you’re part of the target audience (or have a kid who is), then I think it’ll be something worth watching. The movie does nail some great images and highlights some dinosaur species that we haven’t seen in other films before. But on the whole, there isn’t much reason to drop a couple hundred bucks on something that feels very much like a superior museum film. — VC, GMA News