The instantly, blessedly forgettable Walking with Dinosaurs is an 87 minute film based loosely on the
concept of the 1999 BBC documentary series that featured CGI dinosaurs in
nature photography of our present-day world standing in for their prehistoric
one. It was a nature documentary that tried to imagine the past, and was
popular enough to spawn an “Arena Spectacular” full of animatronic creatures
that toured the world. The new film has more in common with Disney’s Dinosaur, a 2000 feature that did the
same trick – real footage with animated dinosaurs – but added a narrative,
avoided narration, and let the dinosaurs talk to each other. Neither one of
those projects were in any way perfect, but this new Walking with Dinosaurs is the worst of both smashed together in one
nearly unbearable experience. It features nonstop babbling of grating
docu-style narration, annoying modern colloquialisms, heaps of lame attempts at
humor, and a story that features nothing worth thinking about or getting
invested in.
After a brief live action frame story about a paleontologist
(Karl Urban) taking his niece and nephew with him looking for fossils, a time
traveling bird (John Leguizamo) guides us through the story of a baby Pachyrhinosaurus
named Patchi (Justin Long) who bumbles around the wilderness with his herd. One
day, they all migrate south. After much literal plodding and a few moments of
predator and prey jostling, Patchi gets separated from the herd, along with his
bully older brother (Skyler Stone) and a girl Pachyrhinosaurus (Tiya Sircar)
who is along to be in a love triangle that’s more like being traded between
them as if property. After much more plodding around, their not so incredible
journey leads them back. Then, just when I thought that was the end of the
story, it cruelly continues for another twenty minutes or so. It’s not just
that the plotting is simple and painfully predictable. It’s done without an
ounce of imagination in sight, a clash of intentions, perhaps.
It’s obvious the movie is trying to serve two competing
ideas of what it should be. It tries to be both something like an educational
opportunity and a generic children’s movie and fails on both counts. It’s two
kinds of terrible mixed together such that I could never get comfortable with
what kind of mediocrity I was watching. Whenever we meet a new creature, the
frame freezes, the name of the dinosaur pops up on the screen, and a child’s
voice reads it to us, along with some accompanying facts. As if the story didn’t
feel endless already. Then there’s the dinosaurs, who are something approaching
photoreal in their animation. They stomp around, grunting and growling at each
other through unexpressive snouts and beady little eyes. No big attempt is made
to make these creatures into anything like actors in the movie. They just root
around being big, blank animals. When they talk, their mouths don’t move. We
hear the voices booming on the soundtrack but they’re just standing around
blinking at each other.
Most of the dinosaurs remain silent, but for our three leads
and the bird. I suppose that’s a blessing, but it makes for a confusingly
silent soundscape. Combine that with the inscrutability of the scaly mugs, and
it feels like someone dubbed in the voices at the last minute. Not that it
would play any better without them, but it would’ve lessened my desire to be
given a mute button. The storytelling proceeds in a terrible clash of
insufferable narrators. Leguizamo’s bird is always distracting with off-hand
self-aware comments like, upon looking at a nice forest, “Don’t get too
attached. It’s going to be an oil field.” Long’s dino is a whiny simpleton with
an obvious character arc, but he chimes in from time to time as well, talking
back to Leguizamo’s narration.
Many moments revolve around the dumb little dino getting
pooped on or talking about poop. Other moments involve him falling over or
something and when he first meets the girl of his species of his dreams, Barry
White enters the soundtrack. All that’s the comedy, I guess. Still other times,
dinosaurs are stalked by bigger, scarier dinosaurs, sometimes escaping, many
times not. The predators tear into their limp prey viciously. The movie
features both poop jokes and teeth gnashing at greater than required levels. At
one point, the awful humor and bloody circle of life collide, when Leguizamo
says one kind of dinosaur has no natural predators right before it’s eaten
before our eyes. “I think I jinxed him,” he says.
The co-directors are Barry Cook, who also co-directed Mulan, and Neil Nightingale, who has
produced nature documentaries for the BBC and PBS. The screenplay, such as it
is, was written by John Collee, who wrote Master
and Commander: The Far Side of the World and Happy Feet. I don’t know what went wrong here, but they all clearly
should know better. Walking with
Dinosaurs is interminably irritating, trying desperately to be all things
to all people – educators, small children, and dinosaur fans alike. And in the
end, it’s much closer to nothing for nobody. The biggest joke of all is when we
return to the frame story to find Urban’s aloof tween nephew has been so
inspired by the story we just heard that he has a newfound love of
paleontology. He stares off into the middle distance, smiling with wonder.
Sheesh, if this dumb story is all it took, wait’ll he hears a good story.
