Wheres an asteroid when you really need one?, Dec 17 2002

After landing on the island, they meet a suspicoious man who befriends them and takes them to some poorly constructed sets, I mean village. There they encounter a terrifying poorly made CGI dinosaur that is subdued by a lady (A very attractive lady of course) and then they head for waterfall city. From that point on, they try to adapt to life in a dino island while trying to survive being complete idiots. They love to swear (Nothing big, this being a ABC film), love to hate each other, and are completly obsessed with getting away. So much in fact that one of them takes a stone that powers a villiage in exchange for a rowboat to sail home with, a useless map, and no provisions. And on top of that, he has to sail across a deadly reef, find a path home with no compass, and dont forget that he flew for over 4 hours before crashing and that he had to stay afloat for over 5 hours. And there is a hurricane on the horizon. You really wonder how these people managed to get through grade school. These errors are everywhere. The mayor of Waterfall city is a complete arrogant stuborn idiot who refuses to evacuate anybody when killer birds are heading straight for the city, even though they have a few hours to evacuate. (In the series, how come they can evacuate everybody in a few hours while they cant in the movie?)

My favorite part of the movie is how dumb some of the moments can be later on in the movie, along with some continuity errors.
The World Beneath, which is breathtaking in the books, meerly consists of 1 or 2 tunnels used over and over agian, and a tiny crystal cavern. In these tunnels our heroes encounter one of the least suprising plot twists in T.V. movie history. (How did he get there?) The continuity errors are hysterical. At one point, a skybak instructor tells the students that if thier bird dosent show up, they can never be skybak riders. Of course, our heroes bird dosent show up and he fails, yet when he tries again, he passes and the instructor does nothing. When a charachter is attacked by another charachter, tossed in a sack and tossed into a river to die, he shows up, unharmed and none the worse for wear a few scenes later with no explenation as to how he got there. Huh?

The biggest flaw in the entire film has got to be the final battle, where Evil Pteridactals attack waterfall city. That sounds Ok, but in execution, the scene is unintentionally hilarious. When the birds attack, all the citizens run around screaming, yet nobody thinks about running inside a building. Our heroes arrive just in time, and in a atrociously poorly animated sequence, they manage to help save the city. And come on, Pteridactals are really LAME villians. Why not a Tyranosaur? (They only show up once for about a minute early on) There is however, one bright spot. Zippo the librarian is a funny, interesting charachtewr that is the best actor in the entire film. The list just goes on and on, and I'm out of room, so in closing, no matter how you cut it, Dinotopia is a Brachiasour sized disaster.

The good:
Zippo
Some unintentially funny scenes
you can have fun counting out all the bad elements in the film

The bad:
none

The ugly:
atrocious acting
bad script
lousy CGI effects
bad sets
lots of continuity errors

Summary:
Only good for those who have never read the books. People who love the books will be seiously offended by this

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Great for little kids, including the one in us, Nov 26 2002

Having said all that, however, the bottom line is my younger kids thoroughly enjoyed it. And when I could turn off my adult critic and watch it with the eyes of an eight-year old I enjoyed it too. And that's who it's for. Eight to ten year olds (not necessarily in a chronological sense).

The truth is that the special effects are quite good -- the true star of the show. And the Dinotopia setting, after all is said and done, is enchanting. Except for one stupid scene where the lead male swims naked (apparently) with the lead female the movie is absolutely clean. That makes a four-starrer in my book, despite everything else.

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