VOICE CAST: John Leguizamo, Justin Long; Skyler
Stone; Tiya Sircar DIRECTORS: Barry Cook, Neil Nightingale SCREENWRITER: John Collee DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: John Brooks EDITOR: John Carnochan MUSIC: Paul Leonard-Morgan PRODUCERS: Mike Devlin, Amanda Hill,
Deepak Nayar EXECUTIVE
PRODUCERS: Stuart Ford, Marcus Arthur, Tim Hill, David Nicksay, Miles Ketley,
Zareh Nalbandian DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox GENRE: Action/Adventure, Animation, Kids LOCATION: Alaska and New Zealand RUNNING TIME: 87 minutes
Technical assessment: 3.5
Moral assessment: 3.5
MTRCB rating: G (for all ages)
CINEMA rating: V 13 (for Viewers 13 years old and below,
with parental guidance)
Dinosaurs Patchi (Justin Long) and
Scowler (Skyler Stone) are brothers from the Pachyrhinosaurus family—meaning
“thick-nosed lizard” in Greek.
When they happen to watch their father in a fierce and fatal battle with
a gorgosaur—meeting his death when pinned down by a fallen tree—life changes
for the orphaned brothers. Tough
guy Scowler has ambitions to succeed his father as alpha male of the tribe,
while his younger brother Patchi is quite content in not being the strongest or
the biggest dino of the herd.
Circumstances, however, lead the brothers to the unexpected. In their trek for survival, they are
accompanied by Patchi’s loyal friend, the parrot Alex (John Leguizamo).
The most outstanding thing about Walking with dinosaurs is the extensive
research made towards the creation of the movie. Walking with
dinosaurs is a feature update of the six-part BBC television show (with the
same name) that boasted 700 million viewers globally when it was shown in
1999. The research and the
cutting edge 3D Fusion Camera System (used for Avatar by James Cameron) combine to recreate the earth and its
creatures 70 million years ago.
Grafting the television series’ documentary style onto the full-feature
format to craft a movie that young and old alike could relate to, the creative
team of Cook, Nightingale and Collee spins the coming-of-age tale that shows
Patchi as a hatchling up to the time it finds a mate, punctuated by dinosaur
data superimposed on the screen and voiced over, adding a lecture feel to it.
To the viewers’ delight, a dinosaur
is humanized in Walking with dinosaurs. Patchi’s development—from the nest,
through his navigation of his environment, his trek for survival, his
inevitable conflict with his brother, and the love-at-first-sight he had
for…well, pretty (by dinosaur standards) and fair-complexioned Juniper (Tiya
Sircar), is portrayed in a manner that would endear an otherwise ugly,
lumbering, tough-hided prehistoric predator to viewers. What boy would not go through life as
Patchi did? The emotions are so
real—sorrow, joy, fear, love, jealousy, anger—even if in the back of your head
you’d honestly doubt if dinosaurs were capable of feeling as they are made out
to be in this movie. But could
dinosaurs forgive and love unconditionally? Let the last few minutes of Walking with dinosaurs answer that—and maybe put many humans to
shame.
